Counting Stars
by vicvic221
Summary: Nearly a year on from the attacks that changed her life, Raleigh Alexander has begun to settle back into normalcy. However when a monster of mythical proportions is let loose upon Earth and everything she loves is threatened, she finds herself ensnared with the god of mischief once again. As war among the gods brews, she and Loki must reunite to save Midgard from untold horror.
1. Chapter 1

_**PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS STORY IS A SEQUEL TO THE STORY 'FIRE & RAIN.' IF YOU WANT BACKGROUND, ETC. GO THERE FIRST. CHEERS!**_

_**A/N:**__ If you've read my previous glimpses of this story, you'll unfortunately be out of luck in finding anything new in this chapter. It is identical to my one off 'A Token of Gratitude,' but I'll be double posting this weekend (hopefully) so do go ahead and read on. Thanks to anyone who is returning from my previous time out and hello to anyone who is new. :)_

_Please note that I do not own any Marvel characters, nor do I intend to claim otherwise. All that I claim ownership to are the original characters and plot._

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**Chapter One: Kemet**

_"Ye are Gods, and behold, ye shall die, and the waves be upon you at last._

_In the darkness of time, in the deeps of the years, in the changes of things,_

_Ye shall sleep as a slain man sleeps, and the world shall forget you for kings."_

_- 'Hymn to Proserpine_,' Algernon Charles Swinburne

His bare feet were light upon the stone floor as he sprinted ahead. Clutching his spear in hand, he continued on, his heart feathering out wild beats as he continued to panic. There would be no reconciling this mistake, what would be seen as _his _mistake, to his gods. For millennia, he had stood guard and watched over their security, over the security of this universe, and now he had watched as a terror unlike any other was released into worlds beyond his grasp.

He was but a lowly palace guard and his punishment for allowing a prisoner to escape would be steep. If he were to hide the revelation from them, however, his punishment would be far graver. They would know. They _always_ knew.

He turned a corner, his breathing now loud, laboured, and he continued his sprint through the ornate halls of the palace towards the banquet that he knew to be just ahead. The burn marks that pocked his bare chest beneath his neckpiece were uncomfortable and he was certain that the scratch marks that stretched across his abdomen were still glistening with fresh blood.

He continued on, racing towards the large doors at the end of the golden hallway, barely taking the time to admire their ornate carvings ‑ each bore carvings of branches and leaves ‑ as he might normally. He felt no sense of awe on this day, only a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach and a sense of fear that burned within him and consumed every fibre of his being.

He reached the doors and shoved them open, nearly tripping over his own feet, and stood in the doorway of the banquet hall, his chest heaving as the room grew silent, staring at the lone guard. His eyes quickly roved over the sea of faces, barely taking in one before he passed to the next, until he finally caught sight of the god that he sought in all of the madness. He staggered forward, down the marble stairs and towards the table, and watched as Amun stood, growing tall before him. His long leathers were dyed a rich blue hue, his dark hair hung around his face and to his shoulders, and his sharp, hollowed features created a striking face that left Penamun in awe and fear simultaneously.

He quickly dropped to one knee as he approached Amun's table, bowing his head, and waited in silence for the command to rise to his feet and to address the gods. After what felt like an eternity, Amun spoke in a voice that was like silk.

"Rise, Penamun, you are among friends today." Penamun stood, lifting his head to stare at the god who was observing him with a curious gaze, his eyes slightly narrowed. "State your business to our court."

Penamun swallowed, then licked his lips nervously, surprised by how dry they suddenly felt. He hesitated, searching for the words, and glanced along the table at the other gods who flanked Amun. He felt foolish, ashamed. He had failed at his duty, he would be severely punished for this….

"My lord," he bowed his head, his voice quiet. He cleared his throat, struggling with himself, "My lord, there has been an accident in the prison. Several prisoners have been released, however we captured all but one."

Amun's brow furrowed, but then he laughed, the other gods joining in with him. He lifted his goblet to Penamun, smiling, "Penamun, you are a steadfast and noble guard. One of Kemet's finest. As surely as Ra raises the sun into our sky, you have come to regale us all with the news that you are in the midst of tracking down the final offender of this escape, haven't you?"

Penamun stammered objections lamely, his whole body trembling now. Amun ignored his protests, instead gesturing to an empty place at the table, "Heroism such as yours is worth celebrating, Penamun. Come, sit and drink with us. The prison shall be attended to."

"No, my lord." Penamun shook his head, a fresh wave of nausea unsettling his stomach, "We are unable to retrieve our final prisoner and thus I am here to beg for your leniency. He was far too strong for our force to handle and he has escaped with the intent of traveling to other realms."

Amun's face grew serious and the table fell silent suddenly, the entire hall still.

"What prisoner is this?" Amun demanded, his voice no longer silky but instead commanding and powerful. "What prisoner has escaped the finest of Kemet's guards?"

Penamun hung his head, "My lord..."

"Do not hide your head in shame from your lord," Amun hissed at him. "What prisoner has escaped while under your watch, Penamun?"

Penamun lifted his head, forcing himself to remain steady upon his feet as he choked out the words.

"My lord, it was Am-heh."

There was an uproar, the gods immediately breaking into shouts and getting to their feet, condemning the guard for his failure as Amun stared at him with wide eyes, his face grim. They continued on, proposing various ways to retrieve the demon, if it should simply be allowed free, and who would be worthy of leaving the realm to find and return Am-heh to his cell in the depths of Kemet. Penamun, meaning, was quietly wishing that Osiris might simply strike him dead on the spot for this rather than allow him to continue to bear this shame. It hadn't even been his fault, really…. But, instead, the tall, pale god sat at the far end of the table, his face severe, his brow pinched together, and did not speak. He rarely spoke, Penamun had noticed over the years, and when he did, it was terrifying.

"Enough!" Amun lifted one hand as he barked his order and the other gods immediately fell silent, lowering themselves back into their seats as they halted in their quarrelling. Amun swept his gaze across the hall before looking back to Penamun, his jaw clenched. "You have released Am-heh?"

"There was an accident, my lord. We do not know what happened, but several prisoners including Am-heh escaped today, we are still attempting to find the cause."

"You needn't look any further," another voice sneered from a different side of the hall and Penamun's heart stilled in his chest. He knew that voice and it was never any good to hear that voice. It was Atum. "Am-heh is far craftier than you and your fellows care to give him credit for. Should he have escaped, it was by his own doing."

Penamun nodded, "I understand, my lord."

Amun looked towards where Atum sat, "Is there a way to return this hellhound to its holding cell or has hope been lost?"

"Perhaps," Atum's voice sounded closer now and Penamun's stomach dropped even further as he realised that the god was approaching him where he stood. "I would require a vessel, however."

"Surely you cannot be serious," Osiris snarled, leaning forward at the table. "You mean to leave our kingdom to retrieve it yourself? Send this peasant and any others who were foolish enough to release it into distant worlds!" He motioned towards Penamun, his face twisting as his spit his words at Atum.

"No, father," Horus shook his head at Osiris, "we must send our bravest warriors to retrieve the demon from this world. Simple guards are not enough. My men and I shall set out at dawn and we shall return within the fortnight with our kill."

"And your men have been bested by me several times!" Anat snapped, swishing her hair over her shoulder. "Should you bring anyone at all, Horus, it might be me!"

Atum rested a hand upon Penamun's shoulder, his grip tightening on the guard as he came to a halt beside the man. "You mustn't be like this, my children," he chuckled, looking around the room, his dark eyes glinting. "I shall return Am-het to his cell myself and I shall prevent the massacre of millions in the process. Had any of you enough sense, you might realise that I alone am capable of controlling the beast."

Penamun closed his eyes, feeling the sweat that dotted his brow as it began to grow heavier. He was wracked with fear now, terrified of what Atum intended to do with him.

"Are you certain?" Amun asked, frowning at him.

"As certain as the sun shall rise," Atum replied. "Allow me the privilege of six days to find a vessel upon the world that he has sought out and I shall embark upon the seventh."

Amun sighed deeply, but then nodded, conceding to Atum. "Very well, you have your six days to find the world that Am-het has sought out as well as a vessel. Shall we prepare the necessary sacrifices for the ritual?"

Atum's voice had a smile in it, "That won't be necessary," he murmured. He looked towards Penamun and then gripped him by the back of the neck, his fingers digging into the guard's skin roughly as the man was wrenched backwards so that he looked towards the clear ceiling and beyond that, the pink sky. The god leaned close, hissing into Penamun's ear, "I have already found a fitting sacrifice."

* * *

"We will have to alert the other realms," Atum murmured as he joined Amun upon the balcony of the palace later that evening.

"I have sent messengers to both Olympus and Asgard," Amun replied, continuing to stare out at the dark night sky. "The others shall leave at dawn."

Atum nodded, peering up at the stars that dotted the night. "You have made certain not to alert the people, I see."

Amun paused, glancing instead at the city before himself which glinted with bright lights and was alive with the sound of music and festivities. "They have nothing to fear from this," he shook his head. "War will not be wrought upon Kemet as it was upon Earth. Kemet shall remained as it is; we are prosperous and happy, even you know this."

"You must forgive me," Atum said, pursing his lips, "I merely rue the day that an accident such as Am-heh escapes into the realm of our allies. On that day, Kemet shall no longer be prosperous. We shall be at war with gods as powerful as ourselves and it is very well possible that we shall lose if we are not prepared."

Amun laughed, clapping the other god upon the back, "You are beginning to sound like Horus, old friend. All this talk of war is senseless. No, Asgard and Olympus will agree to remain uninvolved in what transpires with Am-heh."

"Are you certain of that?" Atum asked, grimacing.

"As certain as the sun shall rise," Amun smiled at him, then faltered. "Have you discovered where the demon intends to travel? Is it to Asgard? Olympus?"

Atum shook his head, "It is not Asgard, but rather the Earth."

Amun's smile immediately dipped downwards, turning into a frown, "I see now. This could certainly cause concern given Prince Thor's involvement with that mortal woman."

"Oh yes," Atum laughed, delighted by the idea. "They are naturally very ashamed of it and rightfully so. Gods loving mortals," he snorted. "It is the object of fantasy and that alone."

"Do you believe that he loves the mortal?"

"I believe he is foolish enough to attempt to intervene in our affairs in the name of lust. We can only hope that Odin shall keep the little Prince at bay while I attend to Am-heh. His brother, however, I do worry about."

"He is already in conflict with Thanos," Amun replied dismissively. "Loki shall not cause you any problems."

"And can you be certain of this?" Atum demanded, frowning at the King of the Gods. "He has meddled in mortal affairs just like his brother. If one of them goes, the other shall follow soon after. You know this as well as I do. Do you not remember their incident with the elves? It was pure luck that Horus and Anat were there on that very same day and could lend them the protection they needed."

Amun shrugged, reaching for a bowl that sat on the small table. "They were boys, Atum. They are men now, beyond those silly desires and wiser than you might think. They shall not pose us any serious concern. I am as certain as -"

"As the sun shall rise, yes, I know," Atum snapped, finishing for his old friend.

Amun smiled, plucking a grape from its vine where it rested in the wooden bowl. He popped it into his mouth, mulling over his thoughts, and then looked back up at the night sky. He gestured towards the stars, "Nut has truly outdone herself tonight, hasn't she, friend?"

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A/N: And here we go again... :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing but the plot and anything that you don't recognise from marvel canon.

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******Two: Normalcy**  


In the end, we're all orphans.

It was something Loki once implied to me shortly after we met. It was now something I knew to be true. Eventually, as time passes and you go through the motions of dealing with the death of a loved one, you realise that people begin to fade away. After the initial shock has passed and the formal ceremonies are over, it's just you. Just as it is when our own time comes. No one is there to make that journey with you, instead all of your demons and fears must be faced alone, however terrifying.

Our existence is a lonely one. It is made up of thousands of tiny interactions and hundreds of fleeting relationships throughout our lives, but eventually these interactions end and relationships are severed. And it is then that we are once more orphans, alone in a world of seven billion people who will never be able to experience exactly what we have, only offer their love and affection for a brief amount of time before they carry on with their own lives and move past where you stay, stuck in a metaphorical car with faulty gears.

You can never seem to move, try as you might, for the pain seemingly consumes you, locking you in place as you are left to wonder if there was something you could have done better, could have changed, might have needed to say. And when these thoughts consume you, overwhelming you with guilt and sorrow, every fibre of your being feels as though it weighs a hundred pounds, for you know that there was always something more which could have been said or done. You burn with regrets and want, for perhaps there was something that could have saved a life instead of ending one.

And as much as you want to rail against the world around you, to shout at them all when you see them move on as you fall behind, swathed in your grief, you know just as well that it's nature, that the process can't be stopped. Nothing in this universe stands still, not even for a second. Rapid changes are taking place inside of every living and non-living thing at this very moment, for that is the nature of our reality. We are changing and adapting constantly, moving on whether we want to or not. We are propelled towards a lonely fate and one that we must take upon our own shoulders when the time comes.

Watching someone die stays with you. It never leaves or strays too far from your conscious mind. It may not always visit you as you go about your day or plague your thoughts during the most menial of tasks, but it is there, lurking. When you go to rest your head and instead are submerged in a sea of memories that horrify and pain you, you know that it never goes away. You remember that the smell burning in your nose, the ringing in your ears, the pain wracking your body was all real. You remember that it wasn't a simple night terror, that it was a result of your own naivety, your own arrogance, your own foolhardiness. It is yours alone, try as everyone might to make you believe otherwise. And you will remember it for as long as you wake with a scream on your lips and tears on your face.

If there is truly a Hell which doles out punishment for the sinners of Earth, then it will condemn its prisoners to this, for such horror need only be lived once. To prolong the suffering, to make the victims of such atrocity relive their worst memories is a punishment that might best all others. It is a Hell of an existence and one that might only be understood by those who have seen the darkest side to our nature, both human and alien. And even that is hopeful.

The hardest thing you'll ever have to do is survive. Not survive the hard part, the battle or siege will pass and while that's something in and of itself, the aftermath is the trickiest part. Look at any survivor from any period in history: the wars, the genocides, the rapes, the attempted murders...the list goes on. But there's a consistent trait among every survivor besides the simple fact that they lived to tell the tale. Their experience lives on with them. The lives that they took and that they bore witness to live on in them.

I am by no means the survivor of genocide, the veteran of a Great War, or the victim of the horrors of human nature. I am neither brilliant nor brave, noble or selfless. I am nothing but a mortal woman. A very lucky mortal, at that.

I am riddled with flaws both physical and emotional and I am ripe with anger and self-pity. Self-loathing burns me in a way that no flame might compare to. I was once arrogant, foolhardy, and naive to the dangers of the real world.

My psychologist calls it survivor's guilt. I call it common sense.

You can tell someone a thousand times that it was never their fault that their father ran out from behind the car, reason that he would have been killed in the blast regardless of him being drawn out, you can throw them in therapy for their emotional baggage from the death and abandonment they feel, but you can never convince them of your beliefs. This, I know, is true. For no survivor who bears the shame of life undeserved can simply be told that they are innocent. The only ones who will ever convince them of this reality are they themselves.

It's a reality that I have grappled with for nearly a year. I understand the logic, the reasoning that my psychologist, an ageing black man named Timothy, and family have presented but I still reject these ideas for whatever reason. I still believe that I am responsible, that the blood lies upon my hands for the death of my father. Had I simply stayed where I had been told...

Ben took it harder than I ever could have imagined. I never blamed him, for I knew that I was by no means as put together as I once was. I jumped at loud noises, could barely sleep, and often had night terrors which jolted me awake, shaking and screaming. They, thankfully, were much further apart now. I didn't miss them and had a feeling the rest of my family might agree though they'd never dare to say it.

Susan ended up staying in New York following the service. She put her small house in Boston up for sale, declaring that while I might be Benjamin's guardian, I, too, needed someone to take care of me. I would rarely admit it but I'd come to cherish her presence, understanding the love my uncle had for her after his retirement from service. She understood the baggage and shouldered my duties when I was unable to. She was steadfast and shrewd, yet tender in a way I couldn't describe. Her poise in the face of Ben and I falling to pieces was admirable, even more so was that she helped to reassemble us both.

Jim began working for S.H.I.E.L.D. shortly after the funeral and he had naturally excelled. I knew little of his work, which was classified, but he seemed genuinely happy and settled in nicely. I had a sneaking suspicion that there was a bonus to it in his pay cheque being much larger each month, which allowed him to move into a small midtown apartment and lead a more comfortable life than the one he had led as a beat cop.

As for me, somewhere in between wallowing in my depression and anger and visiting my therapist, I'd secured a complimentary job at Stark Industries. I was by no means the most deserving entry level employee, for I was surrounded by students from Princeton and Stanford and MIT who had worn Stark Industries onesies since birth and saw the sun rise and set upon the glittering skyscraper emblazoned with Tony's surname, but I did have one thing working in my favour, which was that Tony and I were friends. And he knew that beneath the general aloofness and surly attitude, I could compete with the interns and graduates mathematically when it came to designing new nanotech products.

When he'd made the offer, he'd also offered to pay for me to start and finish a degree of my choosing, hinting at the pre-med track. I'd ended up declining, but the offer remained and I knew it. Tony had been kind enough to step into our lives, adopting a role similar to an uncle. He'd quickly paid off the mortgage on the house and ensured that we were comfortable and happy, despite the circumstances. He donated a generous sum to Trinity after Ben had returned to school and there was now a Stark Science Centre rumoured to be in the works. After giving me room and allowing me to grieve in private, he'd insisted Jim and I join he and Pepper for dinner and had then offered me the chance to work at Stark Industries.

I couldn't be ungrateful to Tony. He had been a consistent presence more than perhaps anyone else, save Susan and Jim.

Steve and Clint had grown quite chummy with Jim and it had become routine now to go for drinks. Well, they'd gone for drinks while I'd sat and had either soda, juice, or water. Clint had been all for giving me the fake ID since I'd been drinking in Britain, but both Jim an Steve had shot him down.

I'd also seen plenty of Jane, who I'd grown to be quite close to thanks to Thor's occasional visits and her working in Princeton. She, Darcy, and Erik Selvig occasionally joined us for weekends in New York when Thor returned to Earth on business for the Avengers or to simply visit Jane. I'd last seen the god of thunder in July, he hadn't made an appearance since.

At least Thor visited though, I often reminded myself. He at least made time for Midgardians, made time for the people of Earth. Unlike his brother. Of course, every time I thought of Loki I was brought back to the final days of the battle that had scorched London and had killed my father. Yet, despite the terrible memories that went along with the god, I always felt a familiar swell of emotion in my chest, an indescribable fondness.

Did I still love him? Yes. Of this I was certain that I always would. Would I continue to wait for him idly and sacrifice my own happiness upon Earth? No. No matter how much it pained me, I would not. I could not. Not when Thor swore to me that Loki could never so much as set foot upon the Bifrost with the intent of coming back to Midgard.

He had made his bed as had I, now we simply had to lie in it.

* * *

I ruffled Ben's hair lightly as I walked into the kitchen, turning to see that he was skimming the front page of _The Daily Bugle_ as he ate his cereal. Spiderman had made the cover again, I noted with an inward chuckle. That was probably making J. Jonah Jameson sing. I smiled fondly at my brother, continuing towards the coffee pot as I asked, "Are you up to anything tonight?"

He cleared his throat, "Me and some of the guys were going to go out."

"Which guys?" I asked curiously.

"Just Dan and Jack."

"Where to?" I asked, picking up my travel mug. I spared him a glance, lifting my eyebrows. "A party?"

He shrugged, spooning another mouthful of cereal, "I guess."

"Huh," I murmured, pouring my coffee into the mug. Since getting my job it had become a necessity to grow to like coffee in the morning. It wasn't like I slept enough to pass it up and falling asleep on the job wasn't an option if everyone there was looking to cut throats and get ahead. Besides, if I drank nearly as many energy drinks as I did cups of coffee it would probably kill me.

"Come on, Raleigh," Ben complained, "Dad never told you no when you and Jim went out to parties when you were here. Don't act like you're better than that."

"I'm not," I said coolly, giving my brother a dirty look. "I know that Dad let me go to parties freely and I've never said no to you before, have I?" He made a face, then shook his head, I continued on, "Exactly. Just do like I always say, if you need anything, if something happens, call Jim or I. We'll come get you guys, okay?"

"Nothing's going to happen and Dan has a car anyway so you don't need to come pick me up."

"Is Dan drinking tonight?"

Ben faltered, before saying lamely, "I don't know."

"Well, just do me a favour and call if he does. I want you home in one piece, Ben."

"Are you going to get out of the car?" he asked, eyeing me warily.

I rolled my eyes as I turned and leaned against the countertop, "No, not unless I need to drag you out of there by your ankle. And even then, it'd be Jim carrying you."

My brother scoffed, running a hand through his floppy hair, "Well, they don't think you're weird. So it'd be okay if you got out of the car."

I rolled my eyes towards the ceiling but then nodded at him. Thank god I had the social approval of a bunch of seventeen and eighteen year olds….

"And if I drink or do anything else," he gave me a very pointed look as he lowered his voice, "you won't tell Aunt Susan, right?"

I spluttered, "Do you think I'm a snitch?"

"Well, I don't know. I just don't want her yelling at me is all!"

"If she yells at you, it's for a good reason, you know. It means she loves you." Ben rolled his eyes and sighed dramatically returning to his cereal. I picked my travel mug up, screwing the lid back on as I approached the table, continuing on quietly, "But I'm not going to tell her if you have a little smoke or a bit too much to drink. It'll be our secret, just like always."

Ben nodded, "Unless I give you a reason to?"

I nodded now, "You're catching on."

"Well, I'm not planning on giving you a reason," he said flatly before changing the subject, "Are you going out tonight?"

"Yeah," I said, "Jim and a couple of the guys wanted to go to a bar. Jane Foster and Erik Selvig are going to be coming to stay tonight so just be aware in the morning or whenever you get in."

"Is Jim staying?" Ben asked, glancing up at me as he took another mouthful of cereal.

"Probably, why?"

He shrugged, "Just be a bit quieter," he suggested. Ignoring my blush, he continued on, "I heard Susan complaining to Annemarie from the club on the phone the other day."

"Thanks, Ben," I said slowly, trying my best to remain composed as I attempted to process what my little brother was saying. He was actually telling me that I had sex too loudly. Oh my god.

"Yup," he said curtly. "She said it's hard to sleep with all the noise. I've got to agree with her, though, you know, I mean, I like sleeping in on Saturdays but it's hard."

I sighed, shaking my head as I decided I was finished with this conversation, and then gestured towards the brown paper bag on the countertop, "Don't forget your lunch. Susan bought you roast beef yesterday."

He nodded, "Okay. See you later."

"Have a good day at school, Benny," I murmured, planting a gentle kiss on the top of his head before I exited the kitchen. As soon as I had left, I allowed my face to twist into shock and silently mouth 'oh my god' as I made my way towards the coat rack. Where had that come from?

"Raleigh?"

I stilled, turning to look up at Susan as she made her way down the stairs, "Did I hear you telling Benjamin that Jane Foster and her boss are spending the night?"

I blinked dumbly as I pulled my jacket off of the rack, "Uh, yeah, if that's all right. I mean, we have the extra space and all, I thought it'd be okay."

"Oh no," she shook her head, smiling cheerfully, "It's fine."

"Great," I nodded, pulling my coat on before I picked up my bag, "is that it then?"

"Oh, yes, that's all," she agreed, "though does Mr. Selvig like pancakes?"

My eyebrows went up and I resisted the urge to make a face. Finally I managed, "It's Doctor, Aunt Susan. Doctor Selvig. And, yeah, I'm sure he loves them."

She flushed slightly, "My mistake," she said quietly. She glanced towards the kitchen and then looked back at me, "Have a nice day, Raleigh."

"You, too, Aunt Susan," I said, turning to the door. I quickly pushed my way outside, pulling the door shut behind myself as I made a soft retching noise. This had to be some kind of joke. And surely Selvig had a wife or something already? If he didn't, god that would be unbearable.

I shook myself of the thought as I made my way down the street and then came to a halt as I glimpsed a familiar black car on the corner. I waited, watching as the back door opened and Tony popped out of the backseat, smiling.

"Morning!" he called out, waving cheerfully.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, checking to make sure there were no cars coming before I began to make my way across the street.

"A little birdy told me that you never mentioned it was your birthday last week," he said, smiling happily as I came to a halt in front of him.

I opened and then closed my mouth. I looked up at him, "Did you buy cake for the whole floor like you did for Jerry Donnelly?"

"I may have," he said slowly, careful not to make any confirmation one way or another. "You'll have to wait and see."

"Was this little bird's name James?"

"Actually it was named Clint, but you were close."

"Right," I sighed, "so you came to say there's a hundred cupcakes waiting for me in my office, that's it?"

"Not just that," he said, motioning towards the car, "I mean, I'm here. How about a lift to work?"

I laughed, "All right, and what else?"

Tony lifted his eyebrows as he slid back into the back of the car while I followed after, "What makes you think there's something else?"

"Come on, Tony, don't play coy."

"Okay, okay," he said as I pulled the door shut. "Happy, do you have it?"

Happy Hogun turned, passing him a thick envelope. "Morning, Raleigh."

"Hi, Happy," I said, smiling at him. "How are you?"

"Oh, you know, getting by. You?"

"Can't complain. I saw my therapist yesterday."

"Yeah? How's that going?"

"Great, we talked about baking for an hour."

"I thought you already had a hobby?" Happy said as we began to drive down the street, "Are you supposed to get another one?"

"No, we just both watched the Food channel on Wednesday. They had a rerun of Cake Wars on." _And I didn't want to talk about my feelings surrounding spending my first birthday without my father._

"You know, that is a great show," Happy said, glancing at me in the mirror. "Did you see the one where they did the thing with the ‑"

"Okay, that's lovely," Tony said, cutting Happy off. "You two can talk about cake later, this is more important." He held out the envelope to me and I spared Happy an apologetic smile.

"What is it?" I asked as I turned back to Tony and took the envelope from him. It was a heavy yellow envelope, sealed shut tightly and I glanced over at him, "Is this some kind of new project?"

"It might be," he said quietly.

"Do you not plan on telling my floor about it?"

"Not unless you say you want to do it."

"That's a lot to pin on me, Tony."

"You've already got the nanotech project and the McConnell report to process, if this is too much I'll send it back up to R&D."

"Shouldn't you be showing this to Dave?" I asked him, frowning slightly as I fingered the lip of the envelope nervously. Surely my boss was a better candidate than me when Tony Stark was deciding on where to ferret new projects...

"It's something you're more attuned to than he is," Tony said carefully. "It's more up your alley."

"So it's something to do with Loki?" I guessed, lifting my eyebrows.

"Well..." Tony wheedled for a moment, "kind of. It's S.H.I.E.L.D. business."

How typical. I frowned, sliding my thumb under the lip of the envelope before I pulled it open and slowly pulled out the papers. I stared at the proposal's title for a moment before skimming over the pages. Finally, I looked up at Tony, "This is crazy."

"You're not the only one who thinks so," he said, settling himself down in his seat. "If we built that, it's a portal between two worlds. Easier for Thor, sure, but what would _we _be sending back?"

"Do you think Fury would abuse it?" I asked slowly turning over the pages again as I looked at the designs and schematics for the transporter's electrical system.

"I don't know what I think Fury would do," he admitted.

I chewed on my lower lip, "What does he want us to build exactly? Some of these have different company logos stamped on them," I said, gesturing towards a page with the Oscorp logo on it, "Like, why is he talking to Oscorp if this is some basic transporter?"

"I may have hacked S.H.I.E.L.D.'s system to obtain that," Tony said, pointing towards the page I was looking at. It was some kind of chemical equation and complex language far above my level of understanding. "My copy didn't have that page in it."

"That doesn't answer why he's talking to Osborn."

"No, it doesn't, and that's what worries me more than being out of the loop on that," Tony muttered, glancing out his car window. "What do you know about him?"

"Who?"

"Osborn."

"He's the founder of Oscorp, he has a son named Harry, and his company deals in cross-species genetics and military grade weaponry. I know what everyone knows, I guess. Just the basic stuff," I supplied, feeling incredibly sheepish for my ignorance.

"Norman Osborn is a very powerful man, Raleigh, and he's ruthless," Tony said with a sigh. "Whatever S.H.I.E.L.D. is planning to do with that," he tapped the page, "isn't going to end well where he's involved."

"So where do my team and I fit in?" I asked, shuffling the papers around slowly as I continued to read them.

"Your team," he said carefully, "is going to design a prototype of the base for the transporter. You, though, I want you to go make friends over in Oscorp."

"You're kidding."

Tony shook his head, "I wish I was, but I don't trust Fury."

"Why?"

"Because his shit stinks, Raleigh, and there's no getting around that to me. I want to know what Norman Osborn knows that I don't know before I go any further. Make sure that when Chet and all of the other interns and lab rats get this," he pointed to the paper again, "that they fuck it up. I don't care if you have to stay late and sabotage it yourself. You tell me and I'll edit the security footage and cover you, but until we know what Norman and Fury are doing, we're not going to give them a finished, working product."

I shifted nervously beside him, before I finally asked in a hushed voice, "Do you think he wants to hurt Asgard?"

Tony shook his head, "Too soon to say for sure."

"You wouldn't be doing this if you didn't think that there was just a chance that they could be plotting against Asgard, Tony," I whispered, shaking my head.

"Maybe," he shrugged. "It's a gut feeling though, I can't say anything for sure until we start getting some answers."

"Well, why wasn't the answer on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s database?" I asked him, carefully stuffing the papers back into the envelope. "Couldn't you just find it there?"

He shook his head, rubbing his jaw, "Norman likely has that information. I can only find what's on those papers. Fury will only say it's to make travel between our worlds easier ‑ but for who? Thor has the Bifrost so why bother unless we're planning to send something back?"

"Something that only Norman Osborn can build."

"Something that only Norman Osborn _would_ build," Tony corrected me. "His little science projects can just as easily become weapons as they can great medical breakthroughs. If he wants to make a weapon out of something, he will. So until I know for certain why he's involved, I won't let anything he's helping S.H.I.E.L.D. design go to Asgard. Who knows how it'll react or what it'll do."

"So you want me to go, make friends, and to find out what they're making for S.H.I.E.L.D?" I asked, feeling as though my mouth had gone dry. "What if no one can tell me? Then what?"

"Then we'll figure out how to get into Norman's computer and do it ourselves. But this stays between us, Raleigh. Don't tell a soul outside of this car what we've discussed, especially Jane and Thor. If either one of them catches a whiff of what S.H.I.E.L.D. is doing and gives Asgard the heads up when we don't know all the facts, all hell will break loose. Odin already has one bug up his ass, he doesn't need another."

I nodded, slowly extending the envelope back to Tony. "So just you, me, and Happy?"

He gave a slow, solemn nod, "Yes. No one else."

"I'll do it," I told him, my voice betraying just how nervous I felt. "Whatever you need me to do, I'll do it."

Tony smiled at me, not saying a word, and turned to look out the window instead. I slowly leaned back in my seat as my mind raced and I tried desperately to remember my chemistry class from school. I could barely remember the periodic table and I worked at bloody Stark Industries for crying out loud. Finally, I looked back at Tony, my voice hushed, "Do... do you think Fury is trying to get Loki back?"

Tony shifted uncomfortably at the question, turning to look at me, "I wish I could give you a real answer, Raleigh."

* * *

"Is that Jane?" I wondered aloud, pointing towards the door. I looked at Clint, who slowly leaned across the table, his eyes narrowing as he took in the petite woman that had just entered the bar. She pulled the hood of her coat back, revealing a familiar head of brown hair, and brushed the water droplets from the sleeves of her parka. She turned, standing on tip toe as she searched the crowded bar for us, and as her eyes fell upon our table I lifted my hand into the air, waving frantically to catch her attention.

She smiled widely.

"Looks like it," Clint replied, leaning back in his seat. He picked his beer up, taking a drink of it, and I frowned. He'd been unusually gruff since returning from Colombia. I'd simply chalked it up to stress and figured it would fade within the week, but even Natasha had refused to join us in Clint's company tonight, which was unusual.

"Who's the girl?" Steve asked, frowning, and he gestured towards a girl with light brown hair that Jane was pulling along with her. "Do you know her?" he turned to me, lifting his eyebrows.

I shrugged, shaking my head, "I don't. I guess she's a friend from Princeton because that's definitely not Darcy."

Jim sighed, loosening his tie from around his neck a little more before he picked his pint up. "Doesn't matter, does it? We're all just friends drinking. No business."

Clint smirked, "Tell her you're an accountant, Steve, she'll never want to hear another peep out of you."

Steve rolled his eyes and opened his mouth to reply, but had no time for Jane was upon us, sliding into the booth beside him.

"Hi!" she chirped happily as she made room for the other woman. "Sorry I'm so late, the traffic was really bad because of the weather."

"It's fine," Clint replied for the rest of us, "good drive?"

"Could have been better," Jane admitted. "The rain was pretty bad coming through Newark. Erik is parking the car somewhere, he'll be in shortly."

Clint nodded, pointing towards the stranger that had followed Jane to the table, "Who's the girl?"

Jane's eyes grew slightly and then she flushed, "Oh, I'm sorry. I totally forgot. This is Mariah Bell, she works for _National Geographic_ and is doing a story on my research with Erik and Darcy to run in next month's issue."

Clint grunted in reply and I could almost hear the snarky reply about reporters at a table with two of the Avengers. He gave Steve a look then glanced away, falling silent again.

Seeing Mariah's smile fix, I quickly extended my hand to her, "Hi," I said, "my name's Raleigh. This is James."

Jim nodded to her politely as she took my hand in her own, her smile brightening again.

"Nice to meet you," she said, her accent catching my ear as she spoke over the din. "Where are you from if you don't mind my asking?"

"I grew up in New York, but spent the last five years in England," I replied, breaking our handshake. "You from the Midwest then?"

"Oh," she shook her head, "not really. I went to college out there in Nebraska, but I grew up in Utah. That's where my family is." She looked at Jim, "Are you from England, too?"

He laughed, shaking his head, "No, I'm from Queens."

"Where did you study in Nebraska?" I asked her curiously.

"I was a Husker," she nodded, laughing when I cracked a smile. "Meteorology and climatology with journalism for my minor when I was my undergrad there. Did a Master's at Arizona State in journalism and got my job with NatGeo this past summer. It's been a dream."

"That's pretty impressive," Jim said, before changing the subject, "So you're interviewing Jane here?"

"Yes," she immediately perked up at the question. "_National Geographic_ has been looking to do a big spread on her research for the last several months and I was lucky enough to get called up. My camera guy, Dan, and I are staying down in Princeton for a little while to get a story together."

"What are you writing your story on?" Clint asked and when she flushed under his hard stare, stammering a reply, he added, "By the way, I'm Clint."

"Right," she nodded, "sorry. Uhm, everything we can. The idea of interstellar travel is definitely very appealing to us right now. All of the recent alien invasions, like that Thor guy ‑ you were in New Mexico when that happened, weren't you, Jane?" Mariah looked to Jane eagerly, as if hoping for an answer, and Jane gave her a strained smile.

"Uh, yeah, I was," she admitted. "I'm gonna go get a drink though. What would you like?"

Mariah seemed a little put out but nodded, "Okay," she said, "I guess whatever you're having will do. I'm not too picky."

Jane smiled, "I'll be right back then, I think I see Erik anyway."

She quickly slid past Mariah and headed towards the doors where Erik Selvig was standing, shaking out a large black umbrella. I turned my attention back to Mariah who suddenly seemed much less sure of herself with Jane gone. She looked between the four of us, smiling at Steve, and then asked, "So what do you all do? Are you in science, too?"

Clint smiled devilishly, "I'm a private contractor."

I nearly choked on my drink and aimed a sharp kick at his leg beneath the table. He barely winced as my foot connected with his ankle and continued to stare at Mariah.

She nodded, "So you build things, that's cool."

Clint's grin only widened, "I like using my hands."

I closed my eyes, relief washing over me as it became apparent that she had missed the subtle reference to Clint's work as an assassin. Aware that I was up next, I opened my eyes again, saying quickly, "I work in the research department at Stark Industries. Nothing exciting though, just a bunch of paperwork."

She brightened, "Have you met Tony Stark yet?"

I laughed, "Uh, yeah, actually. He spoils one of the researchers a bit. Not a lot of people really like her, but she just got cake from him today actually because it was her birthday, so I guess you could say I've met him. I've seen him anyway because I'm on the same floor as that girl."

"I didn't think he'd play favourites, that's weird."

"He's a weird guy," I replied, catching Clint's smirk out of the corner of my eye. He quietly excused himself from beside me, heading for the bar to get another beer.

Mariah smiled, then turned to Jim, "What about you?"

Jim returned her smile, "I work for a pharmaceutical company."

"What one?"

"Bristol-Myers Squibb," he told her.

"And what do you do for them? Are you in administration or research or what?"

"I'm helping them to develop a new set of cancer treatment drugs. There's currently a pan-Notch inhibitor that we're developing to treat several forms of cancer like breast and colon cancer. It's only just on the verge of reaching Stage II, all really complex and very dry and I wouldn't want to bore you with those details," he explained, finishing with a wink.

"Wow," she looked impressed, "where did you study?"

"Tufts," he replied casually before adding with just the slightest hint of smugness, "I had a full ride."

It had become his go to story since he had joined S.H.I.E.L.D., he'd gone to Tufts on a full ride scholarship for chemistry and now worked for Bristol-Myers Squibb in their pharmaceutical research department. If he hadn't gone to the police academy and had taken his scholarship to Tufts or Stanford, he would have ended up studying chemistry and becoming involved in pharmaceuticals. It had been his plan in high school, well, the plan he had told most adults anyway. I'd had my inkling that he would join the force and yet, despite it, I'd been shocked when he'd refused his scholarships and applied to become a police officer in the city.

Mariah turned to Steve, who had been sitting quietly, clutching his drink in his hands and smiled at him kindly, waiting.

Jim cleared his throat suggestively and Steve shot him a dirty look before he returned to Mariah, saying thickly, "I'm an accountant."

I snorted and Jim cracked a wide smile.

"What's so funny about that?" Mariah asked us, frowning slightly, "It's a perfectly good job. My little brother is actually looking at getting involved in accounting, where did you go to school?"

Steve froze, looking at both of us, clearly unsure of what to say, and I shrugged at him, certain that Clint would be laughing somewhere across the bar as he watched their interaction unfold.

"Tell the lady what she wants to hear," Jim said, nodding. "Not too many of the good ones are interested in number crunchers."

Steve rolled his eyes at us, before he looked back at Mariah, "I went to, uh, Fordham."

_Nice save, Steve. _

"Oh, cool," Mariah nodded. "So do you work on Wall Street?"

"Yeah, I work for a, uh, you know..." He trailed off, struggling as he sought out the right word.

"Hedge-fund," Jim supplied.

Steve gestured to Jim, "Yeah, _that_."

Mariah smiled at him, "And do you have a name?"

He lifted his eyebrows, "A name?" he asked, before realising that he hadn't introduced himself, "Oh, right, I'm sorry. Yeah. I've got a name."

"And it's...?"

"Steve," he said, nodding, "Just Steve."

Mariah smiled a little wider, "Well, Just Steve, it's nice to meet you. And even though your friends think it's lame, being an accountant is perfectly respectable in my books."

"Thanks," he said; he quickly drained the rest of his drink and then looked at her, "I'm sorry, I'm just going to go get another drink, if you don't mind."

"Oh no, go ahead!" she quickly scooted out of the booth, allowing him to pass her, and when he vanished from sight, she sidled back into her seat, looking at Jim and I. "He's...interesting."

"He's an old soul," Jim said, nodding.

"Who? Steve?" Clint asked as he sat back down, clutching a drink in either hand. I pointed to his cocktails and he pursed his lips at me, "I have two hands, I may as well make use of them."

"Yeah, Steve," Mariah said. "How did you guys meet exactly?"

"Well, Clint here was doing work at Steve's office and they hit it off," Jim said, "Raleigh and I have known each other since we were kids. Her and Jane met by chance at Stark's place last year and she knew Clint, so this kind of became a thing."

"Huh," Mariah nodded. "That's cool. So it's all because of Clint, huh?"

"Seems like it," Clint replied, looking at Jim as he lifted one of his drinks, taking the straw between his lips. "I'm much nicer than I look, I promise," he told her from between his teeth.

Mariah nodded, turning to look at the bar. I followed her gaze, noticing that she was not looking at Jane, who was pulling a couple of pitchers away from the barman with Selvig, but was instead focused upon Steve, who stood with his back to us, working his way towards the front of the bar. He was attempting to pawn the attention of a drunk girl off of himself, polite as ever, and looked incredibly out of place as he stood in the centre of the crowd, his leather jacket sticking out like a sore thumb among t-shirts and suit coats.

Jim motioned to Mariah that he was looking to excuse himself and she again left the booth, waiting until he had passed before she slid into the seat beside me.

"Sorry," she said, looking at me, "do you mind if I sit here?"

I shook my head, "Don't be silly, you're fine."

"He looks just like the guy that used to play Captain America," she said suddenly, her eyes again focused upon Steve. In my peripheral, I could see Clint shoot me a smirk and I nodded slowly.

"He gets that a lot."

"I bet," she said, leaning forward to rest her chin in her hand. "he's pretty hot."

I smiled, exchanging a glance with Clint who nodded at me, clearly thinking the same thing. Steve would hate us for this, but it was bound to be hilarious...

"He's single, actually."

She turned, her eyebrows quirking up, "What?"

"He's single," I repeated myself. "Steve doesn't have a girlfriend."

"I know. I heard you. But you've got to be joking."

"Wish she was," Clint muttered just loud enough for me to hear.

"No," I said, ignoring Clint's snide remark. "He's definitely just Steve, no lady friend. He mostly just works, really. This is the first time we've gotten him out in ages."

"Huh," she murmured.

Before I could continue on, Jane had appeared at the table, her face flushed and in each hand she clutched a pitcher. Erik stood beside her, a pint of beer in one hand and in the other, a stack of glasses.

"Evening, Raleigh," he said, tipping his head towards me. "Clint," he turned towards Barton, giving him the same nod.

Clint pointed to the cocktails as Jane set them down. "You'll die if you drink all of that," he observed nonchalantly.

Jane made a face at him, "It's not just for me," she said as she slid back into the booth. "It's for everyone to share. That one is tequila sunrise and the other," she first pointed to the pitcher that was closer to Clint and I and then to the one nearer to herself, "that's a mojito."

"A woman after my own heart," Clint said, setting down his cocktails to reach for a glass.

Mariah smiled, reaching for the glasses as well, and then reached out for the mojito when Clint had finished with it. She looked back at Jane, her interest in the scientist's personal life rekindled, "So are you seeing someone, Dr. Foster?"

Clint groaned softly as Jane's eyes lit up at the question. "I swear, if she's a lesbian…."

I hit him gently, "Nothing wrong with that."

"Steve," he reminded me quietly.

"True, he might not get laid for another seventy years."

Clint snorted into his drink, "We'll get him laid. Someday..."

"I am actually," Jane nodded. "I have a boyfriend, but it's a bit difficult right now. He works elsewhere."

"Where?" Mariah asked and from her bag, which I'd barely noticed before now, she produced a small pad that already had pages of notes scrawled across it. Very old school of her.

"Out of the country," Jane said, giving her a small smile. "He's...he's very busy."

"I wasn't aware that Jane's personal life was going to be in the magazine," Clint piped up, "do we get to see embarrassing baby pictures, too?"

Mariah flushed, her cheeks tinting red, and she looked back at Clint, "I'll have you know that we're also doing the spread on Dr. Foster's achievements. She's extremely well respected within the community given her background and recent contributions to the scientific community. The world could do with knowing a little more about her. There aren't many women in this field who have as much potential or respect."

"I wouldn't say that," Jane said meekly, pouring herself some of the tequila sunrise. "I'm just doing my job and sometimes I get a bit lucky."

Mariah shook her head, "Don't be silly. You're brilliant. Anyway, how often do you see him?"

Jane spared me a glance over Mariah's shoulder and I shrugged, trying to ignore the slightly bitter twinge that nestled itself in my chest as I thought of Thor. He'd come to visit Jane several times since the battle in London, the most recent appearance of the god of thunder had been in July for a week. Reassured, Jane looked back at Mariah, who had shot me a questioning look.

"Do you know him?" she asked me.

"Of course," I nodded, adding, "we all do."

"Raleigh dated his brother for a short time," Clint said, clearly trying to push Mariah's attention away. "It didn't end well. Kind of a sore subject."

I gave the assassin a grateful look as Mariah nodded, understanding, and returned to Jane, who began to make up a few lies about the last time she had seen 'Donald,' which seemed to be Thor's alias. I stared down into my drink, my hands clutching the glass tumbler for a few moments as I couldn't help but wish that I'd seen Loki in the last several months as Jane had seen Thor. It was embittering and there were times when I would even admit to being jealous. For as much as I loved Jim, there was still a soft spot in my heart for the raven haired Prince of Asgard.

Steve and Jim suddenly reappeared at the side of the booth, chatting about something in earnest - probably baseball, knowing them. Erik got to his feet, shaking hands with both of the men, and then waited for them to slide into the booth before he took his seat again. I could see Mariah's eyes flick to Steve as he sat beside Selvig and began to speak quietly to the man while Jim inspected the label on his beer curiously.

The night continued on like this for a while, Clint and I cackling with one another as we shared cocktails and taunted Steve from across the table, Mariah peppering Jane with questions, and Jim conversing with Steve and Selvig about who knew what. It looked important and I was certain that as soon as Mariah had disappeared, we would hear just what was so pressing. It had to be important if it had been brought to our night out drinking.

After some time, Mariah excused herself to the bathroom and to get herself and Jane drinks, insisting that it was now her turn to pay. I looked over at Jane when I was confident that Mariah was out of earshot, "Is he coming to visit you tonight?" I asked her curiously.

"Who? Thor?" she lifted her eyebrows and when I nodded she shrugged. "I don't know, he's supposed to visit again soon, but I'm kind of hoping he waits until _this_ is done."

I chuckled and caught Steve's eye. "The reporter likes you, Steve," I told him, raising my voice enough for him to hear me over the din.

He made a face, "That's out of the question."

"No!" Jane said, turning on him quickly, "Why?!"

"You know why," he replied, frowning. "I'm not an accountant, none of us are what we say we are. She's just a reporter. And that's not going to end well for any of us."

"She's not a reporter for _People_, Steve," Clint said tartly. "Why don't you just take her number when she gives it to you and go have dinner? Get it in, man."

Steve scowled at the other Avenger. "I'm not going to _get it in_," he hissed at Barton. "That's not right."

"Oh here we go," Clint groaned, tilting his head back. "Tell me more of your morals, Father Steve."

Steve ignored him, looking around to make sure that Mariah was nowhere in sight, "What if she found out?"

"Lie," Selvig suggested from his right.

"Kill her," Clint replied simply.

"_Or_ you could tell her the truth?" Jane suggested before shooting Clint a glare. "She's nice, guys, I don't see what your problem with her is. She's been great with Erik and I ever since she showed up."

"You should definitely kill her then," Clint said, leaning across the table. "Sounds like enemy intelligence to me. Who would be nice to _them_?" He rolled his eyes and laughed when Jane aimed a punch at his shoulder. "Easy there!"

"I'm not going to kill her and I'm not going to take her to dinner. End of story." Steve leaned back in his seat, scowling at the rest of us as we stared at him. "What?!"

"Well," Jim said slowly, "maybe it'd be good for you to take her out. You've got the weekend off. What were you going to do with that time? Fix your motorcycle? You fixed it last month. It's fine."

Steve shut his mouth quickly, pressing his lips into a thin line. Clearly, that was all that he had planned to do on his night off after all. He sighed heavily, "And what am I supposed to do with her?"

"Show her around New York," Jim told him. "She clearly doesn't live here."

Steve huffed. "I hardly know my way around anymore and if I took her to Brooklyn, well, I don't know."

"Jim and I know a couple of people who are working on some shows off-Broadway," I piped up, remembering that two of my classmates had recently become involved in an off-Broadway production of Beauty and the Beast. Rebecca and Sam had always been involved in drama and had been eager to pursue the 'starving artist' lifestyle after finishing school; they still spoke to Jim and probably would offer up free tickets if he asked, knowing them. Rebecca had always had a thing for him.

"What show?" Mariah had reappeared.

"Beauty and the Beast," Jim answered, knowing exactly what I was referring to. He'd seen it on my Facebook newsfeed a few months earlier and had been the one to mention it to me in the first place.

She smiled as she sat down again, "My daughter loves that story."

Well, that certainly changed things. She had a daughter.

"You...have a child?" Steve asked, clearly taken aback by the admission.

"Yes," she nodded, "her name is Johannah but we nicknamed her Jo after the character in _Little Women._"

"So you're married?" Steve lifted his eyebrows and I could just see him glance towards her bare ring finger curiously.

Mariah shook her head, wringing her hands together, "No. Cooper and I never got married. He's a really good father to Jo and we've tried, but it just isn't working right now." She took a sip of her drink, then said, "If this article is well received, I might get a post here in New York to work and she'd come out here to live with me. She's staying with my parents in Utah right now."

"Where's her father at?" Steve asked, puzzled.

"He's actually in the military," she explained. "He's been given deployment to Germany for the next two years so we wouldn't be able to see much of each other. He shipped right before I finished at Arizona so my mom came down to help with Jo while I finished and went for interviews. When we moved back to Utah, I got this job and did a few bit pieces but Jo stayed there while I could come out here to do a bit of work."

"Oh." Steve seemed to be a little more comfortable with the idea of Cooper being absent knowing that he was in the military and then said slowly, "Well, I have a couple of tickets to the seven o'clock showing on Saturday night if you'd like to go?"

Mariah's eyes lit up and she smiled hugely, "Are you sure?"

He nodded, tightening his grasp on the beer that he held between his hands and I exchanged a look with Jim, surprised at Steve's boldness. I hadn't foreseen him asking her out after the revelation of her daughter, much less in front of the rest of us. He certainly wasn't drunk, after all he couldn't get drunk. There was no false courage involved, just Steve's own.

"I'd love to," she told him, unable to stop smiling. When Steve bowed his head, a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips as he lifted his beer for a drink, Mariah looked across the table at Jane excitedly. She then stopped, turning red, and said, "I'm such an idiot. I forgot to get our drinks. Will you come with me, Jane?"

Jane nodded, then slipped out of the booth after a bit of shuffling by Erik, Steve, and Jim, and took Mariah's arm, escorting her towards the bar.

"Are you sure you want to get involved?" Clint asked when they had disappeared.

Steve looked up at him, frowning slightly, "Why shouldn't I?"

"Well, I mean, it's a kid, Steve. She's got one. That's a big commitment on your part if you get involved with this chick," Clint reasoned with a shrug. "You're not just getting the girl, you get the kid, too."

"He's right," Jim murmured, "it's not bad but it's also something to consider."

"Well," Steve said, bristling slightly, "in case you've all forgotten, I'm a good few years older than you. I think that I know what I'm doing when I say I'm ready to possibly help take care of a kid. I could be its great-grandfather for crying out loud."

Clint looked like he wanted to argue the point a little more but at that moment his phone began to buzz on the table, the vibration loud against the thick wood of the tabletop. He quickly picked it up and groaned softly, sparing a glance across the table at Jim who was pulling his cell phone out of his jacket pocket as well, scanning the screen curiously.

"What's wrong?" I asked as Steve pulled out the small mobile phone that Fury had apparently insisted he have; Clint liked to joke that Steve should have gotten a JitterBug phone instead of the dinosaur flip phone he had instead.

Erik shrugged at me as the three men continued to read their messages and Steve looked over at me, explaining, "It's nothing. It's just -"

"Friends!" Thor's voice boomed above the loud music of the bar and caused me to jump in my seat, surprised. I looked up to find him standing at the side of the table, wearing a broad smile as he stared down at us.

"That," Clint said, lifting a glass to the god in greeting. "Maria thought she'd waste some of our time by telling us he's back in the milky way galaxy."

"Well, that's nice of her because what a sight for sore eyes," I said, getting to my feet quickly. I slid over Clint and from the booth, then stood on tiptoe to hug the thunder god. I laughed into his shoulder as he returned the embrace, hugging me tightly, and I pulled away slowly. "How are you? How's Asgard?"

"Very well," Thor answered as he released me. He extended his hand to Erik first and then Jim, shaking each of their hands warmly. He waved to Steve then gestured for me to sit again and for Clint to shuffle further into the booth.

"What brought you back here so soon?" Jim asked curiously as he took a drink of his beer. "You usually wait a bit longer."

Thor smiled impishly, "I have missed Jane," he explained. "No more than that alone has brought me back to Earth."

"Well, you may want to mind your p's and q's tonight, pal," Clint grumbled, gesturing towards where Jane and Mariah stood at the bar, chatting away. "She's got a reporter hanging onto her."

"How does one mind p's and q's?" Thor asked, his brow furrowing as he looked at Clint.

The archer sighed quietly, picking his drink back up and I could have sworn I heard him mutter something along the lines of "This is hopeless," under his breath before he began to suck on his cocktail's straw again.

Thor shrugged, turning away and watched as Jane and Mariah began to make their return. Jane came to a halt a few away, trailing off as she stared at Thor who got to his feet. Her eyes were wide, her jaw slack, and for as happy as I always felt for her, I could feel my chest tighten at the sight as Thor got to his feet.

"Jane."

"Th - Donald," she moved quickly, setting down her drink on the table before she continued on, straight into his arms.

What would it be like? I'd wondered that so often. If he ever came back, what would it be like? What would it feel like to have him there in front of me where I could touch him and hold him again? I could feel Jim's eyes on the side of my face as I watched Thor and Jane's exchange and for a moment I felt guilty for playing out a skewed and impossible fantasy when I should have been perfectly happy with what I had here. I loved him, didn't I?

I smiled at Jane as she turned to look at the table, her face excited, and then felt my stomach sink as I glanced around the table, meeting Jim's gaze with my own. We stared at one another for a minute, each of us silently understanding what the other was thinking. We'd had this conversation too many times already. I knew it perfectly and so did he.

I loved him deeply, I was happy with him, and I'd wanted to be with him, but it just wasn't the same way I loved Loki.

"Th -" Jane quickly stopped herself from calling Thor by his name again as she turned to introduce Mariah to the god. "This is Mariah, Donald. She's the reporter from _National Geographic _who is doing the spread on my work with Erik."

"Very nice to meet you," Thor said, holding out a large hand to the dark haired woman.

She smiled timidly, shaking his hand and then said, "You know, I don't know if you get this a lot, but you look just like that Thor guy."

* * *

**A/N: **Not sure when I'll have the next chapter up but I'm about halfway done with it. Hope you all enjoyed this one. And thank you to everyone who read and reviewed Or favourited and followed the story!

* * *

**Reviews:**

**Loki'sdreamer:** Well I'm back on form with a measly 10k this time! :p I'm glad you liked it. Oh, they're going to be a big focal point of this story when things get rolling.  
**Demonic Jeirin:** I have more to come. ;) Some of it should be easy to guess, some I haven't yet hinted at. But I'm glad this has you so happy! And thanks for that! :D  
**CharmiaArkenstone:** Indeed I am! :) Thanks very much as always. I'm excited for this and writing it. xxx  
**Mija:** Thanks! I'm very much enjoying writing it thus far. The plot I'm working on is about as good as I think I can get with fan fiction. I hope so anyway, haha.  
**Storyreader900:** Thank you! That's really lovely of you to say. :)  
**Amakitkat:** Aw, I'm glad you like them together so much. :) Thank you!  
**Time Lady 945:** thanks! I'm fairly excited for it too.  
**Starlet Spotlight**: It is actually; it was between that and nothing to remember from nekko case. I tend to use songs as the titles basically because they frame some element of what I want to get across. :) I quite like the song as well, one of my favourites currently. :)  
**Oh Hai Serah:** Thanks! I'm glad you're excited for it. It's going to be pretty different to Fire and Rain, I think.  
**KMD88**: That's really the only reason I didn't tell you! :) I also thought you'd gotten the email and already seen it. :p Silly me!  
**AnkaraJace: **24 hours?! That's pretty damn impressive! Serious points to you for finishing the behemoth in that time frame. And look! I updated! :) Also thank you very much, I'm glad you've enjoyed it so much thus far and hope you continue to. :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: **I own nothing but the OCs and plotline. The rest is licensed to Marvel and other respective copyright holders.

* * *

**Chapter Three: Cooler Heads**

A few hours later my head rested upon Jim's shoulder and I watched as our group continued to dwindle. Steve had offered to walk Mariah back to her hotel about an hour ago and Clint had left shortly thereafter, complaining that he'd have a hangover if he had anymore to drink. That left Erik, Thor, Jane, Jim, and I, chatting amongst ourselves as the bar began to quiet, last call fast approaching.

Thor was on about how the elves were apparently threatening to break a treaty with Asgard while Jane probed him about the elves curiously, interested in learning more about them. Erik had supplied his opinion on the matter here and there while Jim and I remained quiet, simply content with listening to the god as he carried on, halfway through his seventh pint of beer and still going strong.

My phone suddenly buzzed against my thigh and I felt my brow furrow. I picked my head up from Jim's shoulder, pulling my phone from my pocket to see that it was an unknown number calling. I frowned, looking up at Jim who was staring at the screen with narrowed eyes. He took my phone, swiping his thumb across the screen to answer it, and then placed it to his ear.

"Hello?" he said, lifting his voice.

I waited, wondering just who would be calling at half past midnight on a Friday mistakenly.

"Whoa, whoa, Ava, calm down," Jim said quickly, grabbing my arm. He looked up at Thor and Jane, mouthing something to them about needing to leave and then nodded to Selvig who scooted out of the booth to allow Jim and I to pass.

"Ava?" I echoed as the five of us began to make our way from the bar. "Jim, what's wrong? Is Ben all right?"

Jim ignored my question, continuing on the phone instead, "No, don't worry, Ava. Just tell them that we're on our way. We'll be there shortly. Text the address to us as soon as you get off the phone, all right?"

He came to a stop as we exited the bar, glancing around quickly to find an empty cab as he and I walked to the street, leaving the others behind. "No, Ava, don't worry. It's going to be fine. Okay, we'll see you soon." He pulled the phone away from his ear, hanging up the call, and then looked at me, "Ben got into a fight."

I closed my eyes, sighing heavily as my shoulders sagged. _Goddamn it._ Opening my eyes, I stared up at my partner, asking, "Is he okay?"

"Yeah, he'll live until Susan gets her hands on him. But apparently some girl called the cops when it broke out and Ava's trying to get them to stop taking Ben out. Apparently she thinks they know me or they think they know me. I don't know."

"So we're going over there?"

"I'm going over there," Jim clarified. "You take them home."

"Jim, no," I argued, "that's my brother and -"

"And he's angry, Raleigh. He's angry and there are police involved. It's not a simple matter where we can just waltz in and pick him up because he passed out drunk. Let me go throw my weight around to see if I can make this go away."

I folded my arms across my chest, "And what if you can't?"

"I can and I will," he told me, pressing his lips to my forehead. "Don't worry. I keep telling you, I'm going to take care of things and I mean it."

"I'm coming with you, James," I said quietly.

Jim stared down at me and then sighed, raking a hand through his hair. He gestured towards Thor, Jane, and Selvig, "And what about them? How are they going to get home?"

"Two of them are astrophysicists, I'm pretty sure they'll figure it out somehow."

"What's wrong?" Jane asked as she approached Jim and I slowly. "Has something happened?"

"My brother got into a fight at a party, nothing serious," I explained. "I just need to go get him with Jim and take him back to the house, that's all."

"No, you're going straight home with Jane and the others," Jim told me sternly. "I will take care of this."

I looked up at him, my eyes narrowing, "Don't tell me -"

"Well, we'll come, too, right, Thor? Erik?" Jane cut me off, looking over her shoulder at the god and Selvig who perked up at the mention of their names. She looked back at Jim as she flagged down a passing yellow van, "Might not be a bad idea to have a god on your side."

Jim's jaw tensed slightly, but he didn't push the issue further as Thor and Selvig joined us. He instead turned towards the cab that had halted beside the kerb and waited with me as the others clambered inside.

"You know, it isn't your place to make these calls," I said quietly.

"Don't start this shit again, Raleigh," Jim muttered, allowing me to get into the cab first. I smiled as I sat beside Thor despite wanting to snap at the man behind me as he continued on in a low voice, "We're doing this together and I'm trying to do the best I can. Think about it for once."

I set my jaw now, ignoring him as he settled into the seat on my opposite side, instructing the cabbie with the address. He gently rested his hand upon my knee as he leaned back and gave me a curious look, lifting his eyebrows at me. I nodded after a few minutes, conceding defeat to him in silence.

"Jane says your brother has been in a fight?" Thor lifted his eyebrows as he turned to look at us.

"My brother is involved in a lot of things these days," I said grimly. "Not many of them good."

"Our brothers are alike in this way," Thor chuckled. "It does get better with age, at least. Or with the help of a good woman."

I could feel Jim stiffen at the mention of Loki but Selvig broke through the tension with ease as he leaned over the seat, clapping Thor on the shoulder. "They probably say the same thing about you!"

Thor grinned, "Aye," he agreed as he glanced back towards Jane. "I was a lucky man indeed, the gods smiled upon me most favourably."

My stomach knotted uneasily and I leaned a little closer to Jim, my hand resting on top of his own. I glanced up at him, staring into his eyes for a moment before I left a gentle kiss at the corner of his mouth. I remained close to him, whispering, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have snapped like that."

He shook his head and his fingers laced through mine. His voice was loud enough for I alone to hear, "It's fine, you've said and done a lot worse before."

I nodded, knowing that we wouldn't be able to continue this conversation in front of the house guests and instead pressed my lips to his cheek once more in a lingering kiss.

"I love you," I breathed into his ear. "Never forget it." I pulled back as Jim gave my hand a gentle squeeze and then returned to Thor and Selvig who were still talking animatedly. It was something about an upcoming meteor shower. Jane threw in comments here and there, talking about the history of falling stars on Earth, explaining this particular shower to Thor who then went on to regale us with stories of how when stars fell in Asgard the whole sky glowed bright in an aurora, the colours dazzling hues and the tails of every comet as bright as a bolt of lightning in the dead of night. The part of me that wasn't spellbound by the descriptions of his world had to wonder if the cabbie thought Thor to be entirely delusional, but when I spared a glance at the man out of curiosity, I relaxed. He had earbuds in.

Jane eventually steered the conversation away from Asgard, instead talking about something she, Darcy, and Selvig had seen at a museum in Washington recently. When Thor wondered aloud where Darcy was, Jane explained that her assistant was currently visiting family.

I glanced down at my phone occasionally, hoping that I would receive another text from Ava, something that could ease my worries about Ben, but none came. As we finally turned down a dimly lit street, the cab slowing to a halt, Jim instructed the cab driver to wait and then motioned to Thor to get out of the car as well.

I followed Jim out of the door, earning a dirty look, but no argument. Jane and Selvig remained in the cab while I walked with Jim and Thor down the street, towards a house where a police cruiser was parked. Jim sighed quietly in aggravation at the sight and then looked down at me, "I will handle them."

I nodded, knowing better to argue about this. He was still friends with some guys in the department, he might know one of the officers on this particular call.

Jim strode ahead of Thor and I now, walking up to the officers who were speaking to a couple of girls that looked like they'd had more than enough to drink and slurred their words as they recounted whatever had happened. He waited until one of the officers turned to acknowledge him.

"Sir?" the cop asked curiously. "Can I help you?"

"James Fylan, 47th precinct," Jim replied, "I understand that there was an assault that took place here tonight?"

"47th precinct?" the other cop chuckled, "you're a bit far from home, Fylan. We've got this covered."

"I'm not with the precinct anymore; I'd just like to take my brother-in-law home," Jim said, frowning slightly.

The officer's eyes narrowed as he looked Jim over a few times, "And what do you do now?"

"Federal work," Jim replied shortly. "Small arm of the FBI working in geopolitics. Do you have Ben Alexander here still?"

"So it's Agent Fylan, huh?" the man chuckled again, "This is great. Look, Fylan, there's a kid in my car there that's named Ben. You're not walking into my crime scene and throwing around some bureaucratic titles to get him off the hook. You should know how it works, you look wet enough around the ears to still remember the rules."

The cop turned away before Jim could reply, dismissing him, and began to walk towards the drunk girls his partner was still interviewing.

"I'm not about to throw around some bureaucratic bullshit," Jim replied tersely, following after the man. "I just want you to let him go tonight and to forget all about this."

The cop came to a halt, turning to look at Jim with an incredulous expression. "You shittin' me?"

"I'm not shitting you," Jim practically growled. "Let him off."

"Fylan, I've got another kid down at the local hospital getting stitches because of that kid there," the cop said, walking back to Jim. His eyes narrowed as he pointed towards the car and I glanced towards the cruiser, my heart clenching at the sight of a familiar mop of brown hair. "I'm not letting that one go. I've got six witnesses that can pin him for assault. More if I track down the rest of this little free for all's guest list."

"And what about the other one?" Jim argued. "Was he a good little boy that took it laying down?"

"Fylan, you can't change this one even though you've got friends in the department. Go home. Have your wife call up the family and a lawyer and let me do my goddamn job."

"Look," Jim stepped around the man, blocking his path as he began to walk away once again, "Ben's got issues. He's in therapy. Is there any way you can just turn a blind eye on these guys this one time?"

"Fylan, I don't have time to listen to some sob story shit about this kid's sensitivity," the cop retorted, beginning to get annoyed. "Get out of here."

"Look, _please_. His father is dead, died in the attacks last year. The kid hasn't been right since then."

This made the cop stop, his face softening for the first time, "Jesus Christ. In Newark?"

"London, actually," Jim clarified, sparing me an apologetic look for having used my father as a Get Out of Jail Free Card for Ben. The cop sighed, looking away as he shook his head in disbelief and Jim carried on, "He's got anger issues, we're well aware of it and we've got him in therapy for it. Let me make you a deal."

"No, Fylan," the cop said looking up at him. He lifted a warning finger, "I'll make the deals."

"Fine," Jim nodded, lifting his hands in surrender. "Just reconsider for a minute. You'd be ruining this kid's life for something he can't even control. He's a scared kid, you've got to understand that."

The cop held up his hand again, silencing Jim and pondered this for a moment before he barked at his partner, "Rick!"

The other cop glanced up and then quickly excused himself from the two girls.

"Yeah, Tom?" he asked as he joined Jim and the other officer where they stood. "Everything all right?"

"Go get the kid," Tom said curtly. "Cut him free. He's going home with Agent Fylan here."

Rick eyed Jim warily for a moment before looking back at Tom as he said slowly, "All right."

"Look, Fylan, this is the deal. I make this go away one time only. If I ever hear about this kid causing shit again in my neighbourhood, I'll have his ass nailed to the wall, you got it?"

Jim nodded, "Of course."

"These are the conditions," Tom continued, "he gets anger management and you fax a copy proving that he has complied with a mandatory 90 day program to me. I want a daily piss test to prove to me that he wasn't smoking and that he's clean. This is my card," he pulled a thin card from his trouser pocket. "If I don't see it, then it's on your ass and I'll make sure your superiors hear that you're interfering in local police activities, got it?"

Jim nodded again, "I understand."

"Take the kid home, I'll spin something for the other one's parents and have it disappear. This is a one time only offer, you remember that."

"I will," Jim said quietly as Tom turned away from him, watching as his partner pulled Ben from the backseat of the car, unlocking the handcuffs that bound his wrists. "Thank you."

The other man merely grunted in reply as he brushed past Jim, walking over to the girls to dismiss them. Jim started towards Ben, shaking his head at me when I moved to leave Thor's side, and went to my brother first, exchanging words with the other cop before he also left Jim and Ben alone. I swallowed hard, watching as Jim looked Ben over a few times and said something to him that I couldn't quite make out. They then turned and began their final walk towards Thor and I.

I took a few tentative steps forward, sighing softly as I caught sight of a cut above Ben's eye.

"You all right?" I asked him as he came close.

He shrugged, quiet.

I chewed on my lower lip, then looked up at Jim, who was shaking his head at me ever so slightly. Deciding that he was right, that it wasn't worth me pushing the issue and having a fight in the middle of the street about his being lucky, I simply smiled at my younger brother and rested a hand upon his shoulder gently.

"Let's go home," I said quietly as I began to lead him back towards the taxi, Thor trailing after Ben and I with Jim as we made our way back to the cab to set off for home. Hopefully, Susan wouldn't be up waiting.

* * *

"I had a really lovely time with you tonight," Mariah said as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "And it was really nice of you to walk me back to the hotel like this."

Steve nodded, "Yeah, yeah, of course. I'm glad you enjoyed yourself, I did, too."

The young woman smiled shyly, sparing a glance over her shoulder at the hotel, and then asked, "Would you like to come inside for a bit?"

He laughed nervously, "Oh, no. No, I'm afraid I really couldn't. I've got to get myself home..." She nodded, looking slightly crestfallen, and so he carried on hurriedly, "I'll see you soon though, right? Tickets to a show like we talked about?"

Mariah's face brightened again and she smiled at him, "Absolutely. Let me give you my number," she said as she began to rustle through her bag. She pulled out the thin notepad that she had been jotting down her notes on and flipped through it to a fresh page where she jotted down the digits of her mobile number.

He smiled at her as she tore the page free and handed it to him, "Thanks."

"Give me a text," she said, before adding, "you do text, don't you?"

Steve laughed again, "I'm not a big text person, but uh, I'll figure it out."

Mariah smiled, then stepped forward and placed a gentle kiss on his cheek, "I'm sorry if this is too forward, but I'm really interested in getting to know you better," she said as she pulled away. "It's not often you find such a good guy."

His smile widened and he could feel his cheeks grow warm, "Thank you. I'm looking forward to getting to know each other, too."

"Well then, I'll see you soon. Goodnight, Just Steve."

"Goodnight," he murmured, tucking his hands into his coat pockets. She turned, heading for the front doors of the hotel and turned just as she reached them, waving at him.

He pulled a hand from one of his pockets, waving to her, and then watched as she slipped through the doors, vanishing from view. He sighed, tilting his head back to stare up at the sky, and then pulled out the piece of paper from his pocket, staring at her phone number.

He'd have to get Tony to show him how this whole texting thing worked, he decided as he tucked it into his jacket's inside pocket for safekeeping.

* * *

"How is he?" I asked Thor quietly when he emerged from the guest room, pulling his wet jacket off.

He looked at me, then glanced to Selvig who was lounging in the armchair, his eyes glazed from the alcohol. Returning to me, his usually bright face fell for the first time all night. "He is as he always is. There is little change."

I nodded as I sat upon the back of the sofa, folding my arms across my chest. It tended to go like this whenever Thor and I were in private; I brought up Loki and received an unsatisfactory answer in reply. He never came along, he never asked about me, and I was left feeling strangely hollow for wanting something that just wasn't going to happen. We avoided the subject in front of Jim, though I was sure that he had his inklings as to my curiosity.

"He mentioned you to me the other day," Thor offered, clearly hoping it might cheer me more than the same old answer did. I looked up at him, waiting, and he continued, "He asked if I would see you when I next visited Jane."

"Oh," I nodded. "And I guess you told him yes?"

He nodded, "We do tend to see one another when I visit due to her post at Princeton," he said with a sigh. "He knows this, of course, so why he asked I do not know."

"Does your father still have him restricted to the realm or is he allowed to leave now?" I asked, unable to keep my curiosity at bay. Maybe, just _maybe_ Odin had lifted the ban on Loki's travel.

Thor balked, "No, the All Father wishes to keep him from harm. He does not leave Asgard with the permission of the palace."

I frowned at the statement, looking up at him again as my eyes narrowed, "With the permission of the palace?" I echoed. "So he _can_ leave?"

He shook his head, "I do not know, Raleigh. Loki has his powers, he is capable of travelling here if he wishes, I should imagine. But I do not have knowledge of his constant whereabouts, nor does the All Father. Heimdall does, perhaps, but whether he has seen Loki upon Midgard or not is beyond me."

"I see," I nodded and looked up sharply at the sound of footfalls on the stairs. Jim's appeared, Ben's bloodstained shirt in hand. He came to a halt at the bottom of the stairs as he caught my eye and then made his way into the living room slowly.

He looked between Thor, Selvig, and I, then said, "Ben'll be in his room, I wouldn't bother trying to go in there tonight, though; he's in another mood." He looked around the room a second time, his brow furrowing before he looked up at Thor, "Jane already in bed?"

"Yes," Thor nodded, a small smile curling his lips upwards. "A bit too much to drink tonight, I'm afraid. She was quite tired during the last leg of our journey here."

"He really is lucky that you were able to talk that guy out of collaring him," I said quietly, bringing Jim's attention back to me. "He's not always going to be so lucky."

"Raleigh," Jim held up his hands, "chill. It's done and over, Ben's home and safe. There's not going to be any charges pressed and Ava even said the guy Ben hit was being an asshole all night long. You've got nothing to worry about, nobody is going to incriminate their kid in underage drinking and fighting if the kid is getting offers from MIT for his arm."

"Jim, that's not the point!" I retorted hotly. "Ben can't just get off that quickly! He's being reckless and what if something happened that we couldn't fix? What if next time we aren't so lucky? Don't tell me to relax, he's my brother and I am worried out of my mind that he's going to seriously hurt himself or someone else if this keeps up!"

"Stop," Jim stepped in front of me as I moved to stalk past him for the stairs, "Ben got bloodied up, too, Raleigh. It's not like he was a savage that got off scot free."

"Oh right, he was a savage who got a bit bruised up and off scot free," I replied dryly.

"No, he got lucky and in the morning, you can have a go at him, okay?"

"I can have a go at him when I please, Jim, and if that happens to be now you have no right to stop me!"

"Raleigh, you're not his parent, you're his sister!" Jim's voice went up a level. "Leave him alone!"

I felt my face flush and I glowered up at my partner, opening my mouth to argue when Thor suddenly broke into the conversation, "I think perhaps we might all wish to sleep on it as they say in your land, no? It does not do one well to make rash judgments and quick decisions. If I may speak freely, I know that were many times I acted as your brother has on this night and that I often resented such brash discipline from my father."

"And that disciplining is how you met Jane," Selvig reminded him quietly from the armchair.

Thor glanced back at him, frowning slightly despite a twinkle in his eye, and then looked back at me, "You might only wish to wait until the morning, Raleigh. Allow for cooler heads to prevail."

I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, weighing my options as I considered the god's proposal. Jim rested a hand on my shoulder, "He's right, Raleigh. We've all had a bit too much to drink tonight. Let's talk it over in the morning."

I glanced up at him and then looked back at Thor and Selvig. Finally, I nodded, "All right," I agreed. "We'll talk about it with Ben in the morning. I'm still telling Susan though."

"Do what you will there," Jim said, holding his hands up, "I never said you couldn't."

"Well, if that will be all," Selvig said as he got to his feet and stretched his arms above his head, "I think I'd like to get some sleep."

I nodded, smiling, and then stepped around Jim, bidding Thor and Selvig goodnight as I headed for the stairs. Jim followed close behind, shutting off the hallway lights, and trailed after me up the stairs and into my bedroom.

He headed straight for bed, flopping down onto the mattress with a deep sigh. He sprawled out, closing his eyes as he rubbed his face wearily and then lifted his head, watching as I closed the bedroom door.

"Come here," he said quietly.

"Gimme a minute," I replied, making sure that the door was firmly shut before I crossed to the window and drew the curtains across. I glanced over my shoulder at him, noting with some amusement that his look was slightly impatient. "You're in a mood."

"Aren't you?" he asked, lifting his eyebrows at me.

I turned more fully now, rolling my eyes at the man before I pulled my shirt over my head, casting it to the floor. "We've got to keep it down, apparently."

Jim snorted, sitting up, "Says who?"

"Ben," I replied nonchalantly as I walked over to him. I eased myself down onto the bed, settling myself on his lap comfortably and began to loosen his tie. "Apparently Susan is gossiping to the ladies at bridge."

He rolled his eyes now, resting his hands upon my hips as he fell backwards on the mattress again, "Typical."

"Thank you, by the way," I said quietly, glancing up at him as I began to unbutton his shirt. "For doing what you did tonight. You were great."

"I always am," he replied cheekily before his face softened and he lifted a hand, cupping my cheek gently. "I'm glad I could be there to help."

I smiled at him then turned my head slightly, leaving a gentle kiss upon the inside of his wrist. I slid my hand beneath his shirt, resting my hand on the soft skin of his chest as I continued on, "It meant a lot, it always does. Ben…. He looks up to you."

"He's a good kid," Jim murmured, "practically my brother. I'd do anything for the little bastard."

I laughed softly.

"Maybe bastard is too strong a word," Jim reasoned.

"No, it's pretty apt," I said dryly, "one of many very apt words for him currently."

"Well, you know that I

"And that's why I can never stop thanking you for being there for him when I can't," I whispered as I leaned down, pressing my lips to his own gently. "Thank you, Jim."

He nodded, his eyes closed still, and carefully tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear as he opened his eyes to look up at me. "Don't mention it."

"You did get lucky though," I said as I sat up and rolled away from him. I got to my feet again, glancing over my shoulder as he sat up, his dark brow furrowing together.

"Lucky?" he echoed incredulously.

"You haven't gone deaf have you?"

"Not unless you've gone blind, I had it in the bag."

"Uh huh," I rolled my eyes, waving him off, "tell me another one."

"You're good at cooking."

I frowned at him as I kicked my shoes off. I walked back to the side of the bed, standing between his legs and wrapped my arms around his neck. "That's not very fair, you know."

"You wanted another one," he muttered, bowing his head to leave a gentle kiss on my bare stomach. "I gave you another."

"Mm," I sighed, unbuttoning my jeans. "I don't like this game much."

"You never like playing games where you lose," Jim replied with a smirk. "And you never like admitting when I've got you beat."

"Well, I can think of some better games to play," I murmured, wriggling out of my jeans. I grinned down at him as he tilted his head back, his lips pursed. "Is that a no?"

"No," he laughed, fingering the waistband of my panties. "I was just going to say that these would look a lot better on the floor."

* * *

"She is happy," Heimdall murmured, looking up at the raven haired god who lingered beside him, his face clouding over at Heimdall's words.

"She's with the mortal then," he acknowledged grimly. Of course she was with the mortal. Thor had said they were practically inseparable from one another...

Heimdall's lips curved slightly, "You act as though she is above her pedigree. A mortal trifling with another mortal might be beneath the interest of a Prince such as yourself."

He ground his teeth together. "Show me."

Heimdall turned towards him, "You do not wish to see."

"Why?"

Heimdall was quiet, turning back to the void at the end of the bridge. He remained still for a few moments, staring at the dark skinned god, and then swallowed hard as he understood. Turning away from Heimdall, he started back towards the city, his blood pounding in his ears at the thought of Raleigh entangled with the man.

"If you are thinking of sneaking off of Asgard again," Heimdall suddenly said, "I will know."

Loki halted and turned back to stare at Heimdall. The golden eyes were almost taunting as they settled upon him and his hands curled into fists.

He sneered at the gatekeeper, finally saying, "You know far less than you think."

Loki turned away from Heimdall, squaring his shoulders as he forced himself to keep walking as Heimdall's deep laughter echoed around him. His fingernails dug into the skin of his palms as he moved forward, his only thought was to put the mortal out of his mind. She had forgotten him, so why was it that could he not simply forget her?

* * *

**A/N:** Sorry for sort of disappearing on you guys! Genuinely not the intention but I got caught up in life as tends to be the case. Had a birthday, as some of you may know from KMD88, and I'm also quite busy otherwise. However, I did finish up a playlist for this story! And managed to finally get motivated into writing this chapter.

If you're interested, and I do like to recommend that you do listen to the playlist as it does reflect a lot on what's happening in the story, then head over to 8tracks dot com. :) Since links are always broken, follow this:

8tracks Vicvic221 Counting Stars: A Fic Mix

Hope you enjoy my (apparently) very hipster tastes. Haha.

And if you haven't heard, KMD88 started her sequel to her fanfic Chasing the Storm. Go read it! I insist! She's fabulous.

* * *

**Reviews:**

KMD88: Oh you! Always flattering me. I always find beginnings so dry, I personally can't wait til I get back to blowing things up and surprising everyone with plot twists. I think I might have a problem... And everyone is excited for that (even though you've seen what it is)! I quite like Clint, I have Katie approve wherever he's concerned, hehe. And I bet that they're your new OTP. :p Can't imagine why for the life of me.

OhHaiSerah: Ah, well, I will disappear like this here and there (for a couple weeks or so at a time) if I'm to be honest. But I have an incurable writing bug so I tend not to be able to stay away for very long. :) He'll be back before you know it, never doubt him. ;) And thanks! Maybe someday, haha.

CharmiaArkenstone: Thank you :) I like to plan all of my writing in advanced so I have a very clear endpoint in sight. With Fire and Rain I didn't know for sure about the ending because A) I winged the beginning and B) the characters were really born and grown there so some things were changed up or left out entirely. With this story, I have a very clear frame of mind about what I want to write and how I want to do it. I do a lot of research about my subject material, even as I'm writing, and if I come up with a subplot, I try to continuously tie it back to the main story arc because I don't like random, pointless arcs that do nothing to advance the story or develop characters. I never like to introduce someone or a storyline if there's not a point. Every character has a purpose in some way, even if it's to make an appearance in the final battle. I don't have an exact formula to tell you how I plot, it may simply be down to my being obsessively methodical when I care about something as much as I do about writing. I would recommend Chris Nolan, however, for viewing. It sounds strange given that he's a filmmaker, I'm sure, but he has some of the most exceptional plot lines and story arcs I've ever seen. I'm consistently awed by him and would like very much to someday be on his level (it's The Dream, really) or close to it. But study how he teases and tricks you and layers his stories, The Prestige is a great, if not the best, example of this. If you like intricate story lines that film will take your breath away. xx

Why Fireflies Flash: No worries, life catches up with us all sometimes. Take it easy.

Demonic Jeirin: haha, thank you! :) And I've endeavoured to!

StarletSpotlight: Thank you! A lot of my personal experiences went into that one; it was cathartic in a way and I'm glad to know it didn't just resonate with me. Clint will be around! They're drinking buddies ;) I'm personally a big Jim fan, but to each their own. And the Osborn situation... I'm quite keen to blow that one out of the water.

Reading Conundrum: You'd think that, wouldn't you? Could be the alcohol, could be more to her... Guess we'll have to wait and see. And thanks! I'm a big fan of trying to keep characters as in-character as possible, so I like to analyse scripts and read character biographies a lot before I introduce anyone. Natasha will definitely get more time in this story than she did in the last one.

January Raines: Thank you! :)

kearabee: Thanks! I'm really pleased with the way the trajectory of the story looks in my head and I'm so excited to share it. I think that the beginning of that chapter consistently ranks among some of my favourite writing from the whole story.

Loki'sdreamer: :) This one clocked in around 5k and is luckily nowhere near as dense! And I quite like Mariah, she's a good character in my head.

WhiteInnocence: Thank you very much! I'm glad you enjoyed it :) And far from perfect, there's some real cringeworthy moments in there for me!

titaniumalloyman: Aw, thank you so much! Your review actually made me giggle a bit when you mentioned those who shall not be named (they have a special place reserved for them in fanfic writer hell, I think).

TimeLady945: I am! :) And boy should you be excited! I'm excited!


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing but the plot and the original characters. You should know that by now, I hope.

* * *

**Chapter Four: Fear and Loathing**

"Raleigh?" I opened one eye, peering out from beneath the covers at my bedroom door. Closing my eye, I waited, then, "Raleigh?" A knock followed this time.

I sighed quietly and felt Jim stir behind me. He picked his head up, leaving a gentle kiss upon my shoulder as his arm slid around my waist. I smiled softly, reaching up to carefully stroke the side of his face when he rested his chin upon my shoulder.

"Kid's up," he muttered as Ben knocked again. "Never known him to be so eager for a punishment..."

"Maybe he likes it," I replied out of the corner of my mouth as I pulled the blankets closer and attempted to ignore Ben's continuous calls for attention.

"Answer the door, Raleigh," Ben said finally. "I know you're up. You can't sleep past seven when you're hungover."

Jim chuckled, rubbing my arm as I scooted closer to him; I rolled over, hiding my face against his bare chest. "Get the door," I mumbled.

"This one is all you," Jim said quietly. I picked my head up, glaring at him. Before I could begin to plead with him to go to Ben instead, he tugged the blankets away from my body and made a shooing motion. "Go to your brother."

I huffed, getting to my feet, and padded across the room to shrug on my robe. "Hang on, Ben," I called over my shoulder as he knocked again, much louder this time.

"It only took you forever," Ben complained in reply.

I rolled my eyes, shooting Jim a dirty look as I cinched a knot at the waist of my robe and headed for the door. He ducked his head, laughing into his pillow, and I picked up a shoe from the floor, chucking it at him. It missed, sailing over him before it clattered against the wall and flopped to the floor; Jim picked his head up staring at it for a moment before he began laughing harder.

"Oh, shut up," I said, wrenching the door open. Ben lifted his eyebrows at me as we came face to face with one another and I folded my arms across my chest defensively. "What? Do you want me to ground you before ten or something?"

"You don't ground me," Ben sneered, "anyway, Susan's taken that liberty already. No phone for a week."

"Is that it?" I asked, raising my eyebrows. "You have nothing else to add? You just wanted to tell me Susan took away your phone?"

"And my curfew got changed back to ten."

"Big surprise. You know that you were really lucky ‑"

"Tony Stark is downstairs," Ben said, cutting me off before I could begin my tirade.

My eyes widened much to my brother's delight and I quickly shoved him aside, making my way towards the stairwell. I winced as I passed the hall windows, the sunlight that streamed inside painful on my eyes. I headed down the stairs quickly, following the familiar sound of Tony's voice into the kitchen.

I came to a halt in the doorway, looking around the breakfast table at Selvig, Tony, and Susan as they continued to load their plates with food and felt my face twist at the scene. What was my life coming to?

"Morning, Sleeping Beauty," Tony said as he lifted a glass of orange juice into the air. "Have a nice night?"

"Yeah, great," I said as I stepped into the kitchen slowly. "What are you doing here?"

"Can't a man come to be among his friends?" Tony asked me innocently.

I felt my eyes narrow and I turned to my aunt, saying, "Aunt Susan, can you please -"

"He's already told me, Raleigh," she said, cutting me off with a dirty look. "You might remember that you promised you would keep me looped in on these things, young lady."

"What things?" Jim asked, coming into the kitchen with Ben. He was fully dressed and looked as if he'd even managed to brush his teeth in the time it had taken me to get down the stairs to confront Tony. He lightly patted my rear, smirking over his shoulder at me as he headed for the coffee machine.

"Raleigh agreed to spy on Norman Osborn," Susan answered coolly.

Jim turned on his heel slowly, lifting his eyebrows at me. "You did what?" he asked me, his voice was soft, yet deadly.

"Tony asked me yesterday," I explained quickly, loathing the fact that Tony almost seemed to be enjoying how this was playing out in front of him.

"But you agreed?"

I sighed, "It's complicated, Jim."

His face clouded over and he turned away, muttering, "Of course it's complicated. It's _always_ complicated where he's involved." I folded my arms across my chest, flushing deeply and watched as he opened up one of the cabinets to pull out a mug. He shook his head as he slammed the ceramic mug down onto the countertop and I flinched. He looked over his shoulder at me, lifting his eyebrows, "You're not even going to try to deny it?"

"Jim, please," I took a step forward but he held up a hand, stopping me from continuing on.

"It was rhetorical, Raleigh. I don't want the bullshit," he poured himself a cup of coffee and then set down the carafe. He looked up at me, his eyes fierce, "When you're done trying to save his ass again and would like to join the rest of us in reality, let me know."

"Jim..." I pleaded as he stalked past me. I followed him out into the foyer, my cheeks hot with embarrassment, "Jim, just listen to me. It's one time only. It's for all of them and -"

"And what, Raleigh? Is he going to come back for you then?" he demanded as he spun around. "Is he going to come and sweep you off your goddamn feet? Reward you for saving his ass when he's the one that nailed it to the fucking wall?!" When I didn't reply, he scoffed as me, "Well, I hope you have fun."

Jim turned away, making his way towards the garden door. I remained rooted to where I'd come to stand, my throat constricting as I watched him round the corner to head out into the small garden at the back of the house. I hugged my arms a little tighter to my chest and took a deep breath, willing myself to remain composed. He was wrong, I told myself. Jim was wrong.

I sighed deeply, rubbing my face, and turned back to the kitchen. I stopped, staring at Ben who was lingering at the foot of the stairs, his eyes hard and his face emotionless. Of course he would have wanted to watch me have a fight with Jim over Loki... Nothing gave him more pleasure than seeing me argue with Jim over Loki.

"He's right," Ben told me quietly. I averted my gaze, brushing past my brother and quickly headed back into the kitchen. I wasn't in the mood to engage him in a petty argument. He didn't know anything.

I threw myself down into the chair across from Tony and lifted my eyebrows at him, "Have you finished ruining my morning yet?"

"You managed that one all by yourself," Tony replied calmly as he spooned a dollop of jam onto his toast. "You're lucky Thor didn't hear that little tiff."

"I'm really not in the mood, Tony."

"I'm just saying," he replied, "anyway, heard all about last night from Erik here."

I glared at him, "What do you want?"

"Oh, well, if you don't want to talk about it..."

"Tony."

"Just wanted to invite you and lover boy out there to a little party I'm putting on next month." Tony reached into his jacket pocket, passing me a wax sealed envelope. I took it, turning it over a few times and lifted my eyebrows at the formality of the invitation. Calligraphy title, wax seal, fine paper….

I waved it in the air, "Wax seal? How classy."

"Pepper's idea," he replied through a mouthful of toast and jam. "All credit goes to her."

I smirked, picking up a butter knife and carefully slid it beneath the seal, cutting the letter open. I pulled out the small card that lay inside and read it quietly.

_Mr. A. T. Stark formally requests your attendance to a Stark Industries benefit in honour of those local youth affected by life threatening and incurable disease._

_18th October_

_7.00pm_

"You're baiting OsCorp employees with this, aren't you?"

"I would _never_ do something like that."

"Liar," Susan muttered over the brim of her coffee mug. She picked up the _Times_, glancing up at Tony as he stared at her, his brow furrowed. "It's true."

Tony shrugged and then looked back at me. "All right, so I might be. In fact there may be an invitation waiting for every OsCorp researcher come Monday."

"You're ridiculous," I said, setting the invitation down with a heavy sigh. "Why don't you just let me go over there and poke around on my own?"

"Everything Norman Osborn does is top secret and you won't see a thing without someone who has the correct permission, Raleigh," Erik piped up. "A social is a good way to rub elbows."

I pursed my lips, then nodded, "I suppose so. Did you invite Norman and his son?"

"Their invitations are being delivered as we speak," Tony said with a little nod of his head. "I figured I should give the boss the first invite. Along with the rest of high society New York."

"How kind of you," I muttered.

"Mm," Tony nodded and got to his feet, pulling another envelope from his pocket which he passed to Selvig. "For you, pal. Hope to see you there."

"Tony," Selvig laughed, "I don't think I quite fit in with what you're looking to sell."

"Nonsense!" Tony replied, clapping the astrophysicist upon the shoulders. "The circus artists won't fit in either but I'm not about to cancel them."

"Circus artists?" Susan lifted her eyebrows. "I don't claim to have attended many of these events, Stark, but aren't circus performers more appropriate for your conventions?"

"Ah, Susie, that's where you're wrong. I've got half of the Cirque du Soleil coming in to dance on those ribbons of theirs. It's going to be plenty of fun."

"Pepper's going to kill you," I said in a very matter-of-fact tone.

"She couldn't bear the thought of it," Tony replied waving me off. He leaned over Selvig, snatching another piece of bacon off of the plate at the centre of the table. Munching on it, he cleared his throat, "Well, I think that covers it. I'll see you Monday, Raleigh."

"You sure you just don't want to come over tomorrow too?" I asked sarcastically. "Become a permanent fixture?"

"You make me sound like a piece of furniture," Tony said, placing a hand over his heart. "I'm hurt."

"No, you're not."

"You're right, I'm not. But sarcasm _is _the lowest form of wit."

"Only to those who can't understand it," I replied dryly.

He made a face at me, then looked at Susan, "Thanks for breakfast, Susie. Let's do it again sometime." She merely waved him off with a small huff and turned the page of the paper. At least she was used to him and his antics by now. "Erik," Tony said as he shook the researcher's hand. "Let's get dinner soon. My treat. We'll talk about your research a bit. I'm very interested in it."

"You know much about interstellar travel?"

"I'm learning," Tony replied with a laugh. "Give me a day or two to catch up."

Erik grinned, waving at him as Tony began to leave the kitchen. I got to my feet, following him into the foyer to see him out of the house.

"Did you really have to tell Susan like that?" I asked him as we came to a halt before the front door.

Tony sighed, "Raleigh, you can't keep secrets like this. They'll be the death of you."

"I'm protecting them by not telling them," I argued quietly. "They were better off not knowing, Tony."

"And what if you turned up dead?" he asked, earning a scoff from me. "No, I'm serious. You're risking your neck by doing this. That's why I gave you the choice. That's why you still have the choice to back out."

"What do I have to be afraid of?" I asked him, shaking my head. "There aren't any aliens who are planning to invade our planet anytime soon, are there?"

"You're trying to steal secrets from a multi-billion dollar company, Raleigh. It's run by one of the most powerful men in America and he is ruthless. If you cross him, there's plenty of reason to think you'll be put in harm's way."

"Then I guess I've just got to stay on his good side, don't I?" I replied icily.

Tony sighed, catching the tinge of aggravation in my voice. "Don't be stupid. You read the papers, you know what it's like out there right now."

"You actually believe this stuff about that guy who's calling himself the Green Goblin?" I asked, lifting my eyebrows.

"What choice do I have but to believe it?" Tony asked me, "I run around calling myself Iron Man. This guy is out there killing people who are completely innocent. There's something bad out there, there's a lot that's at risk for everyone right now in this city."

"Well, I'm pretty sure that New York will be okay in the end," I said as I pulled open the front door. "Now if you don't mind I need to go tell my boyfriend that I'm not throwing my life away on an Asgardian god."

"Good luck with that," he said as he turned on the top stair of the stoop to look down at me. "You're going to need it, kiddo."

I pulled a face at him and then shut the door, no longer in the mood to entertain Tony or to be made fun of. I rested my forehead against the smooth wood for a moment and sighed heavily, my shoulders sagging, before I turned and slowly began to make my way down the hall towards the garden.

Jim and I had fought often and furiously about the fact that I was still worried about Loki and his behaviour. The last argument had ended in he and I breaking up with one another for a few weeks before settling on a loose agreement that I wouldn't go looking for Loki and would keep my nose clean. The crazy adventures would be left to Jim alone, I didn't need any attention attracted to me with S.H.I.E.L.D.'s interest never having waned.

"Jim?" I poked my head out of the garden door nervously, swallowing hard as I found him sitting at the small patio table, his eyes locked firmly on the garden wall.

"What do you want?" he asked after a few moments, turning his head slightly.

"Just to talk," I replied timidly, stepping out into the garden. "If that's all right. We can talk about this."

"What's there to talk about?" Jim muttered as I slowly approached the small table and eased myself down onto the edge of one of the metal chairs. "You already seem to have made your decision."

"I..." I sighed quietly. "I'm sorry."

"Why do you do this?" he asked me, turning to look at me, "I don't understand, Raleigh."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, why do you have to do this?" he shook his head. "Why can't you just let him go? He hasn't come back for you yet and it doesn't exactly appear he's going to be making a return anytime soon."

"I have let him go," I whispered, shaking my head. "I'm with you, aren't I?"

"Well, it doesn't exactly feel like that, Raleigh," he said sighing deeply. "Everyone you know, that you see regularly, knows him, knows about you and him. You have never gotten away from it."

"And you work for an organisation that wants his head on a plate," I replied, feeling slightly annoyed. "We've got it from all sides, you know."

"And what if I quit?" he asked me, lifting his eyebrows. "What if after Ben leaves, I quit and we leave? Go somewhere together."

"Jim..."

"I can get a recommendation out of Coulson," he said quietly. "We can leave the city. There's bad blood for us here anyway."

I fell back in my chair, folding my arms across my chest and shook my head, "I don't know. This is all we know, this is our life here. We grew up here."

"And we're only killing ourselves by staying here," Jim said bitterly. "I want to be with you, Raleigh, but we can't keep doing this. We can't have a third person in this relationship."

"Okay, fine. Where would we go?" I asked him, lifting my eyebrows. "The Mojave Desert?"

Jim rolled his eyes, "Very funny."

"We're not going to get away from anything, you know that," I said, leaning towards him. "What difference will it make if we stay in New York or go running off into the wild? S.H.I.E.L.D. is never going to stop pushing for information on me," Jim grimaced and opened his mouth to argue but I held up a hand, "Why do you always deny it? You know they're looking into me whenever they get the chance!"

"I'm not trying to deny it, I just think that maybe, you know, if we left it'd die off. If we cleaned up shop here and did something like D.C., we could settle down, have a nice place to ourselves. We could do this the way we're supposed to."

"Would Coulson even give you a rec into the CIA or the FBI?"

"Does it matter?" he lifted his eyebrows. "He'll give me a recommendation to get me work, regardless of where it is. You know that."

I sighed quietly, "You really think it'd all just go away if we left New York? That it wouldn't follow us?"

"I don't know what I think anymore, Raleigh," he told me, his voice gentle. "But I'm willing to try anything if it means we can just have a slice of normal again."

"Then you're a fool," I replied, looking down at my hands. He hissed out a low breath and I glanced up at him from beneath my lashes as I continued on, "But if you're a fool, then I'm a fool, because I'd follow you to the ends of the Earth."

Jim's face softened. "You mean it? You'd leave?"

"I'm not going to make any commitments yet, but yeah, I think I might," I said slowly, nodding at him. "I'd need to think."

"But you're open to it," he said, his voice growing serious again, "right?"

"Yes," I nodded. "I'm open to it."

He grinned, glancing away and licked his lips slowly, thinking. He glanced back at me, blinking a few times, then, "If you do this, I'm not going to be happy about it. But if what you say is true, and it's for all of them, then do it. I won't hold that against you, Raleigh. Just please, don't get burned by this. If anything goes wrong, come to me. I will help you. I promise."

I reached out, carefully resting my hand on top of his own. "I promise, Jim. I'll be safe."

He nodded, sobering, "Don't take any wooden nickels from those Asgardians, all right?"

I laughed, "You sound like my grandma."

"It's part of my charm," he replied, a small smile gracing his features for a moment. "But I mean it, don't. You don't have to do this and if you want to back out, you back the hell out. I'll take your place if I have to."

I squeezed his hand, "You're such a noble git, James."

"That's also part of my charm," he said, chuckling. "Is it working?"

"Your charm is always working."

"Good," he smiled and then exhaled slowly, "I have to leave this afternoon. I got a call from Phil while you were in there. My team needs to head to Toronto tonight."

"Is everything all right?" I asked, my brow furrowing.

He shrugged. "It seems pretty routine to me, just a suspicious murder. The government is calling us in though because the medical examiner hasn't seen anything like it before."

"They don't think it's aliens, do they?" I asked, glancing over my shoulder to make sure that the garden door was firmly latched.

"I don't know what they think and even if I did, you know that I couldn't tell you that."

"But if people are dying, we have a right to ‑"

"Raleigh?" I broke off at the sound of Thor's voice, "Jim?"

We both turned, looking towards the house as the god poked his head out of the door to see us, "Susan requested that you be informed your breakfasts are ready. I offered to tell you myself."

I hesitated, staring at him for a moment, and then nodded, forcing myself to smile.

"Sure," Jim replied, his voice hiding any trace of the aggravation I'd been on the receiving end of. "We'll be right behind you."

Thor smiled at us, pulling back, and the door slowly shut as he began to make his way down the hall towards the kitchen. It would be a zoo in there by now with everyone awake, the extra chairs from the hall closet would have been brought out and clustered around the kitchen table. We'd long ago converted the dining room into the front room and Susan had preferred to keep it that way despite our entertaining guests far more frequently than my father ever had.

"I'm sorry," Jim said, bringing my attention back to him. "You know that if I could, I would. But this is where the work and personal life boundary meets."

"I know," I nodded. "And it comes with the territory."

He looked away, getting to his feet, and I followed suit, carefully stepping in front of him as he began to make his way towards the garden door. I rested my hands upon his chest gently, looking up at him, and whispered, "Please, be safe."

The corners of his eyes crinkled and he cupped my face with one hand gently, leaning in to kiss my forehead. I closed my eyes, fingers tightening on the fabric of his shirt, and inhaled sharply, breathing in the familiar smell of his soap and toothpaste.

He carefully tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and I opened my eyes, staring up into his own. "You don't have to worry about me, Raleigh, I've got plenty of reason to come back." His face softened as his finished speaking and he reached out, carefully tugging on my robe. His voice was playful, "Anyway, as much as I hate to say it, you might want to go get dressed."

* * *

Thor left not long after breakfast finished. Jane and Selvig accompanied him, intending to drive him to a safe location where he could once again return to Asgard. Susan had made pancakes, which Thor had been quite fond of, and by the time I'd made it down the stairs, I found that only a few remained from the initial batch and were all that Jim had been able to salvage.

It'd been a relatively uninteresting breakfast. Jim had agreed to attend Tony's benefit as my plus one; he had wrinkled his nose slightly at the small print, which explained that the benefit was to be a masquerade, but had agreed eventually. Selvig had fielded the offer to Jane, who declined due to a previous commitment to Darcy. Thankfully, Susan hadn't tried to weasel her way into the spot, however she had engaged him in several long, boring discussions about books that only they seemed to have read in their spare time. At least I wouldn't have my Aunt hampering me the entire evening while I attempted to schmooze the OsCorp employees who went along for the free drinks and food.

After the three house guests disappeared, Susan left for the afternoon to run errands and Ben eventually slipped out to go to a sports practice, swearing up and down to Jim and I that he would be home immediately after the end of the practice. That left me to watch in silence as Jim packed his bag, occasionally receiving updates on his phone from the other members of his team. Craig, Mona, and Jeron made up the rest of his team and I hadn't yet met any of them, though I knew little details about each.

Craig had been a grifter in Miami since he was sixteen, gradually working his way up the ladder into bigger and bigger crimes. From what I knew of him, he was one of the best at what he did and over the years he accumulated a small fortune comprised of priceless artefacts and fine artwork. He'd unfortunately attempted to pull one over on a powerful banker, which nearly resulted in his death and later his imprisonment. It was there that Fury had found him and offered him the opportunity for early release on the condition that his services be rendered to S.H.I.E.L.D. From what Jim had said, he was the perfect diplomat in tense situations and lethal if crossed.

Mona was apparently one of the top students from the CIA's 2009 intake. She'd made it through Camp Peary with high marks and had been recommended to S.H.I.E.L.D. by one of the administrators at The Farm. She spoke several languages and held a degree in linguistics and foreign literature from a prestigious university somewhere. She'd never bothered disclosing it to Jim or the other team members. She was highly ambitious, played very much by the book, and never seemed interested in becoming friends with the others.

Jeron, the final member of the four man group, was the fish out of water. He'd grown up in a poor neighbourhood in Chicago before getting into Stanford on a full scholarship to study computer science and engineering. He'd never been involved in crime, he'd never even held a gun before entering S.H.I.E.L.D., Jim had said, but he had landed his part thanks to his gift for technology. He had received job offers from Google, Facebook, the NSA, and several security firms, but at graduation, Coulson had arrived and offered him the chance for a life that would be far more interesting than merely encrypting data for the NSA or sitting at a desk for Google. Unwittingly, and perhaps as his first real act of rebellion, he'd taken it.

From what I knew, Jim was closest to Jeron. They got along with each other thanks to being so close in age and their interests at times blended together. They both liked football and baseball, though they would occasionally send one another teasing messages after the other's team was beaten. Jim had been delighted almost the entire baseball season to have a Cubs fan to taunt. Craig was much older and Mona was uninterested, but Jeron had been with S.H.I.E.L.D. just a short while longer than Jim when he finally joined and was assigned to their team.

By the time the car finally arrived to take Jim to the airport, I found myself growing more and more apprehensive. All of the information that trickled in about the impending investigation left me scared. I hadn't missed Jim packing his reserve weapon or the fact that he had more than once swallowed hard after reading a new update. He wasn't as confident as he was making it out to be either.

I followed him out of the house, glancing towards the black car that sat parked across the street and wrapped my arms around myself nervously.

"You're going to be safe, right?" I asked him. "Like you promised?"

He grinned, "Nothing to be afraid of, Raleigh. I've got this under control and I've got the team at my back. It'll be fine."

"I know that you can't tell me what Craig said, but...is it bad?"

He chewed on his lip for a second before he nodded, "It's pretty bad. Worse than I thought it was going to be. But we'll talk about it later, all right? I'll tell you what I can when I get home in a couple days."

"Okay," I agreed with a small nod. "Just...please. Please be safe. And keep Jeron safe too."

He laughed, nodding. "Guy can't aim to save his goddamn life," he muttered, "I'll keep an eye on him though. Maybe when I get back we'll get a drink and you can meet him."

I smiled, "That'd be nice."

Jim nodded, then took a step forward, gently kissing my forehead before he placed a knuckle beneath my chin and tilted my head back. His lips were gentle and I reached up, cupping his face in my hands as our kiss deepened. His hand slid over my throat, to the back of my neck, and he held me tightly, his tongue gently teasing mine before he broke away, leaving several gentle kisses upon my lips.

"I love you," he told me quietly. "Don't do anything stupid while I'm not here to bail you out."

"I love you, too," I replied with a small laugh. I lifted myself up onto my tiptoes, kissing him a final time, "Be safe, Jim."

"I will be," he murmured, pulling away. "I'll be in touch soon."

"I'll keep an eye out," I told him, folding my arms across my chest again. My chest felt tight as I watched him walk towards the black car and I forced myself to remain where I stood. This was a feeling that never went away. It never lessened. I was always torn as I watched him walk away, terrified and proud at the same time of what he was going to do.

He turned as he opened the rear door of the car and threw his bag inside and flashed me his brilliant smile one final time before he slid into the backseat and pulled the door shut.

I exhaled slowly as the taillights glowed red and watched in silence as the car began to make its way down the street, carrying him off to do his duty. Whatever that was.

* * *

"Father, you cannot allow for this!"

Loki's eyes rose from the page curiously at the sound of Thor's voice. He turned his head towards the thunderer as the doors of the library banged open and rolled his eyes with a great sigh.

Never a moment of peace.

He slid from his perch in the corner and shut his book, slowly walking among the shelves as Odin and Thor continued their quarrel.

"It has been mandated by the House of Odinson," Odin said, rounding upon Thor, "You are not King, you are but a Prince, and you shall hold your tongue in matters of diplomacy such as this!"

"You have condemned these people to their deaths!" Thor roared, "I will not stand for this and nor shall Loki!"

He winced at the sound of his name. Of course they hadn't come to the library simply to have it out, they had come to see whose side he would take. How utterly childish of them. No doubt it was Thor's doing; Odin would merely humour the oaf and deny him again whether Loki agreed or disagreed.

Loki emerged from behind the shelves, walking slowly, and clasped his hands behind back. "You call for me, brother?" he asked, feigning genuine interest. "Or do you simply wish to destroy what little solace I have within this palace?"

Thor scowled at him and Odin turned towards the younger of the two Princes, his haggard face hardening.

"I mean no offence," Loki continued smoothly, resting a hand upon his chest. "But surely you might realise that a library such as this does demand a certain respect...?"

"Father has signed an accord with Kemet," Thor said brusquely.

"Oh, how lovely," Loki nodded along, unable to keep the sarcasm from his voice. "Is that all that this is about? The Kemetians would like more of our harvest yield?"

Thor's voice turned deadly, "They have released Am-heh, brother. The demon has been set upon Midgard, it will kill thousands."

He swallowed hard, his gaze flicking towards Odin and then back to Thor. He attempted to keep his voice even as he spoke, "And?"

"And you might wish to agree with me in order to protect those that you love from a fate such as this!" Thor bellowed. "Do you not still care for the woman?"

Loki could feel his temper spike but he remained calm, "I am a Prince, Thor. I do not make such decisions, nor do you. My private opinions shall remain just that."

"Then you are a coward," Thor said, shoving him as he began to walk towards the library doors. "You are a snake and you have no love for -"

He struck out, catching Thor squarely in the face. His chest felt tight and he watched as his brother stepped back, clutching his nose as blood began to leak from his nostrils.

"Do not mistake my obedience for approval," he snarled, no longer able to keep his voice even, "I condemn this act as you do but I am not a fool. What the All Father has done cannot be undone, their fates have been sealed."

And before Thor could answer him or strike back, Loki spun on his heel and stormed from the library. He walked briskly, nearly running through the winding halls towards the narrow set of stairs that would take him to the tower he long ago charted the stars from as a child. Upon reaching it, he slipped into the dark stairwell and began to climb upwards, minding the shallow valleys that had been worn into each stair from the years of use, and headed towards the small observatory that only the other members of the royal family knew him to hide in.

He didn't know whether he was angry or upset or somewhere between the two emotions. He had wanted to stay and to fight Odin, but fighting this was hopeless. The Kemetians had already locked the All Father into a binding agreement. However they intended to retrieve and dispose of Am-heh was now their business alone and despite the interests of Asgard that were at stake, the kingdom would not interfere.

He reached the observatory. His heart was in his throat and he slowly sank to the floor, his mind racing. Surely there had to be a solution, a loophole to the agreement. There had to be a way to stop them from destroying Midgard any further than it already had been.

Loki sat in silence for a very long time, eventually he tilted his head back and closed his eyes, trying in vain to think of a solution. It was only when he heard the sound of heavy footsteps upon the stairs that his eyes snapped open and he looked towards the stairwell, waiting.

The sky had gone dark. It was no longer a pale blue, but instead had deepened to cerulean, the first stars of the night appearing in between the large clouds. The sound of a banquet far below drew his attention to the hunger pangs of his stomach and he shifted, realising for the first time that he felt rather sore from having sat in one position for so long.

As he stretched his long legs out before himself, Thor's head emerged from the stairwell followed by the rest of his body. He came to a halt, staring down at Loki for a few moments and as the younger of the two waited, his eyes roved over Thor's body. He did not carry Mjolnir with him, which was a plus, it meant he was less inclined to smash Loki's head in, however his nose appeared to be a little crooked which left him confident of a later reprisal.

"Yes?" Loki asked, breaking their silence at long last. "You've found me and what is so pressing that you must ask me now?"

"Do you truly believe that you and I are wrong?" Thor said as he took a step forward cautiously.

"No," Loki admitted. "Though whether we are right or wrong is not the question here. You should know this."

"Do you believe then that what the All Father has agreed to is right?"

"Of course I do not," Loki muttered as Thor slid down the wall to sit beside him. "But what choice do we have but to accept his word as law? I have thought for several hours - or tried - on a solution, a way around this, but there is none, brother."

"It sounded to me as though you were sleeping," Thor murmured, glancing over at him. "I believe I heard your snores from several flights below."

Loki rolled his eyes, "There is no solution, Thor, unless we wish to defy the All Father and tempt our own fates."

"As if we have not done that before," Thor chuckled deeply.

Loki blinked.

"You would do it again for them?" he asked slowly. "You would defy the All Father and risk war with Kemet to protect the Midgardians?"

"I would do what I know to be right," Thor said, looking at him, frowning. "And I would hope that you might join me."

"You know that I love her," Loki murmured, looking down at his hands as he folded them in his lap, "but the woman has found herself another Midgardian. Returning to her now ‑"

Thor cut him off, "She asks of you."

Loki swallowed hard, "And?"

"And I tell her that you are no more than a wretched fool that is too blind to see what is before him. I tell her this often, in much simpler terms."

He scoffed, a small smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. It felt like aeons since he had laughed with Thor and yet for the past year, he had laughed more with his brother than ever before. "Is she all right?"

"She is well," Thor supplied, "her brother is causing ruckus and James, the other mortal, he offers her protection and support. She would like to hear from you though, at least this is the impression that I have."

"I can't," Loki shook his head. "I am only able to watch over her."

"Why?" Thor asked, his brow furrowing. "What has made you so weak, brother? What has left you so obedient to father's orders and so afraid of defying his word? If you love the woman, you will return to her, regardless of your fears. If you do not, you may turn your back upon her as she burns with the rest of Midgard. There is no middle ground, Loki."

"I am not you, Thor," Loki growled. "I do not have your airs or your blessings of charm. Should I disobey father, should I be apprehended with you, do you believe that they will be kind to me? That they will pass off my behaviour as that of a lovesick fool as they shall with you?"

Thor's face darkened, "I might think that a man who has seen the darkest depths of the mind of Thanos would be less worried about the punishment he will receive for doing what is right."

Loki wanted to hit his brother again.

"And if their people - if they find me?" Loki demanded. "S.H.I.E.L.D. is not an honourable organisation of men, they will be my ruin. Fury would like nothing more than to jail me as he does with his mortal foes."

Thor was silent and Loki relaxed, resting his head against the wall again. Perhaps he would simply accept Loki's helplessness. This was not the ideal predicament but what choice did Loki have? This was self-preservation.

"I cannot traverse this distance alone, Loki," Thor said at last. "I am not capable of the magic that you are, I cannot wield the powers of a sorcerer as you can. The Bifrost is shut. I need your help, brother. Midgard needs us."

Loki was quiet, flicking his gaze back to the stars. He could just make out the familiar trio of stars that Thor and Jane claimed Earth laid among and his heart ached in his chest as he thought again of Midgard. Was obedience and self-preservation truly worth it?

"If I were to acquiesce," Loki began slowly, "then we will do this on my terms. We will return at the most ideal time, when my identity might be concealed easily, and we shall work towards the destruction of Am-heh together. Your Avengers may have their say, but Am-heh will not be kind to them, you know this."

Thor smiled, looking at him, and clapped a hand upon his shoulder. "We will ride together then." Loki nodded, feeling the thrill that only a plot such as this could bring, and Thor carried on, "I have just the day in mind as well, brother..."

* * *

"So the chief medical examiner has agreed to let us see the bodies," Craig said as he walked into the suite.

Jim lifted his head up from the pillow, his brow knitting together as his eyes settled upon the older man. Craig was somewhere in his early to mid-thirties and his blond hair was beginning to show grey flecks prematurely. His dark eyes swept over the team as they all began to stir from their perches and they hardened, their usual warmth vanishing.

"The chief medical examiner isn't waiting for you to dilly dally, get your asses in gear."

Jim pushed himself off of the sofa, sparing a glance at Mona as she shoved past him, heading towards her bedroom to retrieve who knew what. Knowing her, it was some kind of stealth weapon to neutralise any 'enemies' that appeared. Paranoid freak.

"How many are there?" Jeron asked curiously as he shrugged on his coat. He pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose and flung his magazine down onto the coffee table as he rose to his feet.

"Four," Craig answered, before adding, "what's left of them anyway." He looked at Mona as she emerged from the bedroom, a gun in hand. "Nice to see our one man army is prepared."

She sneered at him, flicking her dark hair over her shoulder. "When you get shot, don't come crying to me, Craig."

"I'm not worried about getting shot," he replied coolly, "I've got the scars to prove it. Let me show you one, Mona, come on..." He turned around, offering his rear to her which simply put an even more disgusted look upon her face.

"Are we done?" she asked coldly. "I'd like to get this over with. Fury has a mission in Moscow starting Tuesday and I want to be back in time for that."

"Like he's going to send you out for that," Jim muttered as he walked past her towards the door. "You're on the Toronto mission, you don't get to go play special Russian operative this week, Mona."

Her eyes narrowed into thin slits, "Watch yourself, Fylan."

"Go fuck yourself, Mona. This ice bitch thing is getting old," he snapped over his shoulder at her as he waited beside the door for Craig and Jeron to join them.

She scoffed as the four of them exited the hotel room and began to walk down the hall towards the elevator.

"So does your girlfriend know you're spying on her yet?" she asked snidely.

"Play nice, Mona," Craig warned from in front. "I'll let him take a headshot next time we're in practice."

"Let him. I'll break his leg."

Jim glared down at the woman who walked beside him, seething. "No, she doesn't."

"Oooh, I bet that'll just make her day," Mona mocked, her voice cruel. "You're sacrificing everything you've got for this job, Fylan... Don't pretend we're so different. You'd sell your soul for this job. My ice bitch act is just the other side of the same coin."

Jim ground his teeth together and willed himself to remain calm as the elevator doors opened. For as much as he enjoyed the work, there really were times when he wanted nothing but to punch Mona's head into a wall or for Craig to take just a little bit more authority with her. If there was ever going to be anyone who caused a problem in the field and let someone get shot, it would be Mona.

"If we're finished," Jeron said carefully, "then can we at least discuss these bodies? I'd like to know what this guy did to these people before I get out there and start shooting."

* * *

"Well," the medical examiner said with a sigh as he headed towards the wall of metal doors, "I can't tell you much about what kind of weapons they used or anything at all really."

"Why's that?" Craig asked as he and the others trailed after the old man.

"I'm afraid that I don't know anything that can do this to a man, that's all," he replied over his shoulder. "I've seen stabbings, shootings, vivisections, gutted and dissected bodies, burns - I've even seen one angry wife drug her cheating husband and feed half of him through a woodchipper. But I've never seen anything like this; it's like a horror movie just landed in my lap this past week and it isn't stopping."

They came to a halt, standing beside one of the freezers and watched as the man pulled on the handle, opening the door slowly. Jim folded his arms across his chest as he watched the older man begin to pull out a track that was covered in a white sheet.

Jeron shifted nervously beside him and he spared a glance at his friend. Jeron was never good with bodies; his face was ashen and he had folded his arms across his chest almost defensively. Jim looked towards Mona and felt a small bit of relief wash over him as he noticed her jaw was clenched unusually tight. If she was uncomfortable then that made it a little better.

"Are you certain?" the medical examiner asked as he looked up at them.

"We're certain," Craig replied, his voice calm.

The examiner nodded, pulling back the white sheet. Jim could immediately feel bile rush up his throat as he stared down at the mangled corpse. There was the sound of frantic footsteps from beside him and then retching.

Jeron.

Craig turned towards the sound of Jeron's vomiting, his face twisted into a grimace. After a few moments he returned to the medical examiner.

"He does that sometimes," he told the other man, almost apologetically. "We'll get it cleaned up before we head out."

"I was nearly ill myself," the examiner muttered, turning to open several other doors. Craig and Mona followed, however Jim lingered beside the first body, approaching it slowly.

The body lay face down on the track and as he came to a stop a few feet away from it, unwilling to go any further, the medical examiner returned to him and the corpse. The other doors had all been opened by now and Craig and Mona were inspecting the other bodies curiously, whispering to one another things that he and Jeron would learn later.

"They cut the victim along the back while they were still alive," the medical examiner said slowly, drawing Jim's attention. The old man's voice was timid as he mimed the cutting motion that the murderer would have used over the body that laid on the track. "Then they pulled the flesh back as you can see..." Jim folded his arms across his chest, holding his breath as the coroner gingerly pulled two large flaps of skin from the body of the man's torso, exposing the broken ribs and half empty chest cavity to the room.

Jeron made a sound that made Jim think he was close to retching again.

"He still wasn't dead at this point, though I'm sure that he wished he had been," the coroner murmured, continuing to point out the details as he spoke, "because following this, our murderer proceeded to cut each of his ribs at the spine and broke them all. Then he removed the lungs and heart from each of the victims, who were by now very much dead.

"There's more than just the back," he continued. He gripped the man's head and carefully turned it so that Jim could see the mangled flesh of the victim's face. Large chunks of skin had been sloughed off, almost as if they'd been ripped away by teeth, leaving behind patches of sinew and exposed bone. His eyes were also missing, the sockets clawed and mangled, hollow.

Jim slowly pulled his gaze away from the face, trying his best to remain composed as Jeron shifted nervously behind him and Mona hovered nearby, her eyes wide. Even Craig looked rather queasy and was trying to subtly get as far away from the other bodies - which Jim had to assume were identical to the one he stood beside - as he could. This was something straight out of medieval torture... He'd never seen something like this. Maybe, a small voice in his head argued, maybe it was just a cult.

He looked further, towards the dark void that the freezer hid the body inside and felt his stomach turn. There were no legs. Nothing below the waist existed.

"Mona," he said after a few moments, his voice shaking slightly. "What kind of culture would do this?"

She turned, her eyes wide and shook her head, mouthing lamely.

"I...they talked about this in the Norse Sagas, occasionally. The Blood Eagle. But the Norse didn't place a high value on organs or harvesting them, like this."

"There were several consistencies," the medical examiner said, looking between them. "I don't know what it will mean to you and your people, but each one of these bodies was missing their eyes, their hearts, and most interestingly, their brains. We found the lungs at each scene, but none of the other missing organs."

"But their heads are intact," Jeron said from behind Jim, his voice barely audible.

"I know," the examiner nodded. "That's the mystery. I only opened one, the rest I had scanned. All of them are empty."

"How did they get the brain out?" Craig asked quietly.

"Old methods," he said, shrugging lamely. "All I could think was that it's very much like the Egyptians used to do. Maybe they pulled them out. But... it seems far too methodical for someone this violent."

"This guy wants attention," Mona said, shaking her head. "He'd do whatever it would take to get our attention."

"Well he has it!" the examiner retorted, his voice overcome with emotion, "For crying out loud, he cut them in two! We can't find their legs their hearts or eyes, we've looked everywhere in the areas we found our bodies. Nothing. We're giving their families back these mangled corpses and we haven't even got the full thing..." The man trailed off, the sound of his anguish fading as he turned away in an attempt to compose himself.

Mona began to walk among the bodies slowly, "Fylan, did you ever work serial homicide?"

"No, I mean, I've studied it. I've been at homicide scenes; you know, maybe a shooting or two."

"Well, you'll at least follow me when I say that this guy is doing it deliberately. The Blood Eagle takes time, so would pulling out every bit of brain matter. And maybe he takes the eyes because he doesn't want them to see him?"

"Some cultures think eyes are the window to the soul," Jeron said slowly. "Maybe he thought he was freeing their souls?"

"If a guy is this sadistic, I doubt he cares much about their eternal soul, Jerry," Craig muttered.

"Egyptians valued the heart, didn't they?" Jim asked, glancing up at Mona.

She stopped in her tracks. "Yes, but they would leave the heart in the body. They would never remove it like this."

"Wasn't there a god who ate the hearts?" Jeron asked. "I read something about it once."

"Ammit," Mona murmured, "she was a demon who presided over the final judgment of souls, but she only ate the hearts of the impure who were unfit for the afterlife."

"So we've got a madman who is into the whole Egyptian mythology thing," Jim said with a nod, "or we've got a very angry god who is out to piss off every deity he or she can. Great."

"That doesn't explain how the Norse bit is getting mixed into it," Craig argued. "Why would there be a mix of the two? Is it some kind of message?"

"It's a fake out," Jeron reasoned. "This guy knows about our problem with Asgard and he's making fun of it."

"Some scholars have argued that the Blood Eagle was practised ritually as a sacrifice to Odin by the Norsemen," Mona explained, shaking her head, "it's possible that they're doing this to mock Odin."

"Or he's sending a warning to Asgard to tell them not to get involved," Jim said quietly as he looked back down at the body. He could feel the rest of the team's eyes on him and so he continued, "If they're real, what makes us so sure that the rest aren't?"

"You're talking about something insane, Jim," Craig shook his head. "Egyptian gods?"

"He's right though," Mona said sharply, turning towards their team leader. "It's no more ridiculous than Thor and Loki, is it? And if they're real, the good and the bad, then maybe the good and the bad are real here, too."

Craig folded his arms across his chest and glanced towards the medical examiner who had been very quiet while listening. "And what do you think?"

"I don't have many thoughts in the way of gods," he said after a few moments. "But I do think that you should all be just as scared as I am."

* * *

_**A/N:**__ Updating in a timely fashion - how incredibly unusual of me! haha..._

_Anyway, thank you to everyone who read and reviewed or favoured or followed the story or myself. I very much appreciate it and am continuously humbled by you guys. Many thanks._

_Also, a very special thanks to OhHaiSerah for doing a lovely cover for me (which I will be getting up in the next day or two once I figure out how to get it off my phone... I'm literally the worst 20 year old out there when it comes to technology). It was so nice of you and you're utterly flawless! Seriously, amazing._

_Oh. And the game is afoot. Get ready._

* * *

**Reviews:**

**OrthoEllis:** Funnily enough, that's the very reason I began my first story on here. I was completely exhausted by the sheer 'fanfictioness' of so many of the Loki/OC stories because none of it felt right. And now here I am, over a year later, still doing it with little intention of stopping anytime soon. Haha. Anyway, in all seriousness, thank you so much. It always means a lot to hear, especially when it comes to characters as they're my big thing when it comes to stories.  
**KMD88:** You're my favourite! And also my other boyfriend as far as my boyfriend is concerned, haha. Oh, headcannon totally accepted. And thanks! :) I like Thor a lot, but funnily enough, he's honestly the one character besides Steve who I have the most difficulty writing. I always worry with him. I think it's out of a fear that I'll stray into that territory where he's just not Thor - he's too dramatic/Shakespearian or too silly like he is in so many other fics. So it means quite a bit to hear!  
**ReadingConundrum:** I call it obsession with the finer details, but dedication works too, haha. But really, thank you. And hey, maybe someday I won't be writing for free, who knows where it'll all go. And I quite like the two of them together, they're rather cute, I think.  
**OhHaiSerah:** Speaking of your designs, thank you again! I just need to go back in my log and find the one that I really liked to get it onto my laptop and up here but I'm a tit and unfortunately won't have the time this evening. It was utterly fantastic and seriously, you are super talented if you can do that on your phone. Like, Jesus Christmas, dude. Anyway, I can definitely see it being a big sibling thing. Most of my friends who are the eldest in their families are very much the same way with their own siblings. Without sounding too geeky, I think there are even studies on it! haha. And yes, it was actually super helpful to finish that playlist. It kind of gives me a trajectory and each song sort of matches up with a chapter or action in the story.  
**CharmiaArkenstone:** Of course! I'm a wind bag though, so you can always get me started on a subject and I'll go for hours if I know and care about it. I'm glad you liked it! xx  
**DMMD:** Aw, no, thank you!  
**StarletSpotlight:** Oh it certainly will be! Eh, I tend to think that that's the reason a lot of readers have ill will or apathy towards Jim - he's not Loki. I've stopped letting it bother me despite caring a tremendous amount about the character, but then I know everything about him and his future arc, so it's different for me. I'm always going to think he's the coolest. I mean no offence, of course! Anyway, thank you. :)  
**ZizFox:** Give it time, it'll happen!  
**titaniumalloyman:** I honestly snorted in the middle of a meeting when I read the first line of your review. And no, very few of my characters tend to be very nice, they're all quite duplicitous in one way or another, but maybe this one will turn out different. Too early to say for sure! And ugh, I could just spin a yarn about the feelings I have for Jim's character and him not being able to catch a break. But that would ruin a lot of things. Give me a couple chapters...I'll be singing like a canary about him then. And oh yes, she definitely still loves him.  
**Why Fireflies Flash:** Aw, thanks! :) You're bang on the head with Raleigh and Ben, as a matter of fact. Oh, Jim is genuinely one of my favourite characters in this whole story and I very much like him and Raleigh together for the same reasons that you listed as well as for quite a few others. Though I'm also very partial towards Loki and Raleigh, of course, haha. It makes for an interesting time when writing this story. I keep mentally switching camps because even I'm all conflicted when it comes to them. And Loki can be a tit, but I'd blame it on him being blinded by self pity. Oh, yes, Steve/Mariah - I love it. I really do. Thanks! And I'll endeavour to. :)  
**NoVacancyMind:** And there was another appearance in this chapter! :) There's more to come!  
**xXDixonFictionXx:** Thank you! That seriously super sweet of you to say all of that. I'm going to blush at this rate! I always say it, but seriously, I always feel so much better when I hear that I've done a good job with the characters, that's always my biggest fear and the one thing I always want to get right more than anything else. And haha, don't you worry...there are many more to come!  
**Guest:** Oh you're so lovely, I'm flattered! Thank you. I'm very fond of their triangle and especially fond with how it develops throughout this story. And yes, Steve and Mariah, there is plenty more where that came from. :) They're a nice, light hearted bit I get to put in. And oh no! Not the dog! :(


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer: **I don't own anything but the OCs and plot. I like to imagine that you guys know this by now, but I feel like I should keep saying it anyway. :)

* * *

**Chapter Five: Possession**

"So what are you doing this Friday?"

I stiffened, looking up from the papers that cluttered my desk and frowned at Chet Samuels. He was an Ivy League intern with a trust fund that probably held enough money to buy a small tropical paradise and he was as entitled and pretentious as they came. His father had a seat of the board of Tony's company, leaving him with serious ego problems when it came to who ran the floor and his true place among the researchers and other interns. I frowned at him, returning to the proof I had been working on and shrugged.

"As of right now, not a lot."

"I've got two tickets to the opera, what do you say?"

"I have a boyfriend."

"Oh, come on, Raleigh," he said as he leaned against my desk. "Do you know what they say about you around here?"

"That I'm a cold, heartless, reclusive bitch?" I asked looking up at him curiously while knowing full well that that was exactly what they said about me around my floor at Stark Industries.

Chet pressed his lips together, clearly put out by not being able to use the insults to his advantage. He folded his arms across his chest, "I don't think they're right."

"Well that's too bad," I replied as I returned to my work, "because they are."

"What do you even do for fun?" he asked me. "More of your 'maths'?"

I sighed, leaning back in my seat and looked up at him, frowning deeply. "I do a lot of things in my spare time, Chet. None of them involve seeing you out of the workplace either."

"Like?"

"Underwater basket weaving," I said sarcastically, "knitting, saving starving puppies from the street, and occasionally I murder men who can't take a hint."

Chet scoffed, "Come on, Raleigh, seriously. Friday night. A couple of friends from work -"

"We're not friends, Chet," I reminded him flatly.

"- A couple of people who could be friends from work, the metropolitan opera, a few drinks and then, well, who knows," he finished suggestively.

"You're a pig, do you know that?" I asked, lifting my eyebrows at him. "I could have you brought up on sexual harassment charges with HR for the way you talk to girls around here."

"Whoa," he held up his hands, "I didn't say a thing about bedding you, lady. Stop projecting your fantasies onto me like that. If your boyfriend isn't good enough in the sack, you ought to drop his ass. There's plenty of better men out there for a girl like you."

"Like you, I presume?" I asked tartly.

"Well, now that you mention it..."

"I'm not interested. Leave."

"All right, I can take the hint," Chet said as he sighed dramatically. He fluttered his eyes at me, "But can you blame me?"

"Yes."

"Okay, okay," he said as I began to get to my feet. "Sit down! I'll cut the crap for a minute."

"A minute?"

"Ten."

"You've got ten minutes for a serious conversation, take another minute and hit on me again and I'll be in Debbie Wynd's office filing harassment papers on you."

He rolled his eyes, saying almost exasperatedly, "They'd just disappear."

"Is Daddy going to clean up another one of little Chet's messes?" I mocked.

Chet smirked, but said nothing. Instead he glanced around the floor at the other interns before he passed me the file he had been carrying in hand. I frowned, accepting it slowly, and flicked it open to the familiar schematics of Tony's transporter for S.H.I.E.L.D..

"Stark gave us a new project, what do you think?"

"I think it's relatively interesting," I said with a shrug, attempting to remain aloof. "What are you doing for it?"

"He wants me working on the design aspect. Kerry and Tina are supposed to start working on the calculations and apparently you're proofing their work. He briefed me on it this morning; said he's going to do a floor meeting this afternoon."

"Go figure," I muttered under my breath as I continued to flick through the file. "Does he really think he's going to be able to disassemble and reassemble someone on an atomic level?"

"The guy's a genius," Chet said shaking his head, "he walked around with a fission reactor in his chest for five years. If he can survive that and pull it off, he can do anything."

"Your team spirit is almost as nauseating as your pickup lines," I told him dryly.

"You could do with a little team spirit," he replied, "and maybe a good lay, too."

"Go," I ordered, pointing towards his project area. "Just go, Chet. I'm not in the mood."

He snickered, taking his file back as I extended it to him, and headed back across the floor to the engineering section. I sighed heavily, reaching for my phone on the desk, and pressed the home button, lighting the screen up as I checked to see if Jim had texted back yet.

Still nothing.

I stared at the screen for a few moments, my eyes locked on the background photo of Jim and I from Valentine's Day. We'd gone out for the night, comfortably agreeing to dinner as friends at an Italian restaurant, and wound up walking through Central Park to our bridge as dusk fell. It was incredibly cheesy, but the photo of our rosy cheeks and smiles had become my phone's background shortly thereafter where it remained for the last several months.

The screen blackened and I set my phone back down, closing my eyes as I wondered again if he was still alright in Toronto. I figured that if anything had happened, Coulson would have shown up by now to speak to me in private or that I would have heard from his mother, Catherine. No news was therefore good news, or at least I tried to pretend as much. Ben had asked a few questions about where Jim had gone and when he would return. As far as I knew, he was due to return Wednesday night, but things often changed rapidly in the field and adjustments would be made to accommodate such changes.

I opened my eyes again, turning to see that my desk mate, a young man named Adam had returned from his lunch. I liked Adam; he was a recent CalTech graduate who liked nothing better than to spend his weekends holed up playing video games and reading vintage comic books. He was probably the only person on the floor who didn't treat me like a social pariah and I was probably the only person who didn't mock him behind his back about his weight. In reality, Adam was the closest thing I had to a friend at work.

"How's it?" I asked him, lifting my eyebrows.

He nodded, "All right, how about you?"

"Well, I want to kill Chet."

"That's a new record," he sniggered, "it's not even two-thirty."

"He has that special talent for making my skin crawl," I laughed. "How was your lunch?"

"It was good," he supplied, before adding, "Don't let him get under your skin too much. I overheard Tina telling another girl that he's trying to see how far he can push you before you crack. They want you out."

"They're going to have a tough time with that," I muttered, "considering I actually know Tony better than any of them ever will."

"How did you even meet him again?"

"We met last year in London. He used to do business with my dad and they were kind of friendly with each other. Tony and I became pretty good friends somewhere along the way."

Adam frowned, "You were there for the attacks right?"

I shifted uncomfortably at the memories that flooded my mind following the prompt. Glass digging into my skin, sheer weightlessness as I leapt from one rooftop to another, a rush of adrenaline that sent me running through the streets at all hours, the scream that had nearly torn my throat in two as I realised my father had been caught in a blast...

"Yeah," I nodded after a few seconds and swallowed hard. "Yeah, I was."

"It must have been something," he said with a sigh, "the Avengers and Loki fighting side by side like that. I'm surprised they never found the girl that the aliens wanted."

I looked up at him sharply. If there was one thing that I wasn't keen on discussing with Adam, it was London and the attacks, I was even less interested in talking about the mystery girl that everyone still brought up when they waxed poetic about Amora and Thanos and their motivations. I began to open my mouth, ready to give him a sharp put down, when I stopped and shut my mouth firmly, deciding against saying anything inflammatory.

I didn't need to sacrifice my only friend in the office over the past.

"Did you meet any of the others?" he asked me after a few moments.

I shrugged, "I've met Thor."

"No way," his voice went up an octave. "That's so cool, Raleigh! When?!"

I smirked, glancing at him as he stared at me, his face bright with excitement, and then explained, "We met a while ago. When I first came to Stark Towers for a meeting with Tony about work."

"Oh," he deflated slightly. "So did your dad pull strings like Chet's to get you in here?"

"My father is dead," I replied stiffly. "I'm here on my own merit and no one else's."

"I'm...I'm sorry, Raleigh, I didn't know."

I shrugged, rifling through my papers, "Not many people do and I like it that way. He died in London last year in a blast; I escaped."

He blinked, stunned. "How?"

"Someone saved me," I replied quietly. Loki the god of mischief and suspected terrorist saved me, a little voice in the back of my head reminded me. "And when I woke up the next day, the battle was over. I ran into Tony at a refugee centre he was visiting a couple days later and just started talking."

"What about the guy that saved you?"

"What about him?" I asked, unable to help the slight hint of annoyance that leaked into my voice at the mention of Loki.

"Did you ever find out who he was?"

"No," I lied, "I never found out who he was. Just a good Samaritan, I guess."

"He's a hero," Adam said as he opened his laptop. "Not many people could save someone from an explosion like that."

My throat tightened and I nodded, silent. I didn't trust my voice anymore.

"Anyway," Adam said, almost as if he sensed my growing anxiety, "just ignore Chet. Once he and Tina and Kerry get over the fact that you're smarter than all of them put together, they'll come around."

I laughed mirthlessly, glancing across the room at the interns and graduate students as they chatted amongst themselves. I glimpsed Tina, Kerry, and Chet gathered together, as usual, and whispering amongst themselves. "I highly doubt they're just going to go away."

"Chet's internship is over in January, then he goes back to Columbia" Adam replied quietly. "Tina finishes in May and Kerry will be done with her research by next December."

I sighed, looking up at Adam, and smiled in spite of myself at the concerned look on his face. "Thanks, Adam."

"Well, people like us need to stick together," he said, beginning to check his work email, "I know that they don't like me and they hate you because you aren't even in college and yet, here you are."

"They only dislike you because they think you're weird," I muttered. "If you went out every weekend with the rest of the floor to get wasted on Friday they'd love you."

"I'd rather be playing Dishonored," he replied shrugging. "I've just found Elizabeth. Besides, they're all phony anyway."

I laughed, opening my own laptop and looked back at him, "And we're real?"

"Well, more than they ever will be," he said with a laugh.

"Can I ask you something?" I said as I typed in my login details.

"Go for it."

"Why don't you hate me like the others do?" I asked, watching my screen darken before it displayed my desktop background. "You've got just as much a right to hate me, you know."

"I totally do," he agreed, "but I'm also older than them and I'm smart enough to know that there's going to be someone out there who is better at what I do than me. Maybe it's Tony Stark, maybe it's some twenty-one year old college drop-out, maybe it's a goddamn dolphin, I don't know. But what I do know is that envy passes and that I can control it. And being jealous isn't a reason to sacrifice getting to know someone who just might teach me a thing or two or help me to be better at what I do. And besides, you're cool. You don't act like you own this place like some pretty boy dickhead with severe daddy issues."

"Thanks, Adam," I said after a few moments of silence had passed. I smiled at him. "That means a lot. You're a really good friend."

"You too, Raleigh," he replied as he turned to his laptop, signalling the end of our conversation. I smiled, looking back at my laptop as I began to boot up the software that would assist in my calculations and glanced towards my phone again. I reached out, pressing the home button again and felt my heart sink as, once again, no new texts flashed up on my screen as having come through.

Soon, I hoped silently. Please come home soon.

* * *

"All right," Craig barrelled through the doors, clapping his hands, "everybody look alive!"

Jim opened his eyes blearily and reached out, swatting Jeron's leg. The other man started, sitting up in the armchair as he jolted awake. Several eighteen hour days in a row had not been sitting well with either of them, however Mona was just as spry as ever and Craig seemed to be thriving on the lack of sleep. She came prancing into view, looking as though she'd been awake for hours and hadn't missed an eight hour sleep in days.

"What's happened?" Jeron asked as he stifled a yawn behind his hand.

"We're going hunting again tonight," Craig said, looking between his team members delightedly. When none of them moved, he continued on, "Don't look so excited now, guys, try to calm down for my sake."

"Where?" Jim asked as he sat up and reached for his boots. "Not the forest again, right?"

"No, an abandoned textile factory on the north end of the city. Hasn't been touched in about twenty years."

"You think this guy would actually bother to go there?" Jim asked, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "Or did you get a tip?"

Craig shrugged, "Some people call it a hunch, other people call it the process of elimination. If I wanted to kill and maim ten people in a week, I'd want somewhere that nobody goes. Now get ready, I want all of you to be ready for a briefing in the next hour. We're setting out at 1800."

"Great," Jeron muttered as Craig began to walk towards his bedroom to change out of the fine suit that he wore. "I hate empty factories. They creep me the fuck out. Almost as much as hunting."

"I heard that, Agent Dodson," Craig called over his shoulder.

Jeron rolled his eyes, lowering his voice so that only Jim could hear him, "You feel up for it?" he asked curiously.

Jim shrugged, "Don't have much of a choice, do we?"

"I guess not," Jeron agreed after a few moments.

"We'll sleep when we're dead," Jim remarked wryly before looking up at Mona, who had been watching the two of them with a frown upon her face. "Yes, Princess? Is there something we can do for you?"

She rolled her eyes. "I was going to say that you two had better have each other's backs tonight, that's all. Dodson, do you still have a jerky trigger finger?"

Jeron shifted uncomfortably, "Well, yeah, probably."

"Come with me, we'll practice. You don't need to be the reason pretty boy here ends up with a bullet between the eyes."

"You give him too much credit," Craig remarked from somewhere across the suite. "Jeron there'll get it in pretty boy's back."

Jim rolled his eyes, sparing Jeron an apologetic look before he looked back at Mona, "You know you're in a hotel, right? Where exactly are you going to take him to shoot fifty rounds off?"

"Local outpost," Mona replied as she headed towards her coat. "You're welcome to join us, Fylan. Unless you want to stick around and catch up on your beauty sleep."

"I don't know, Mona, I'm a bit afraid to go near you when you've got a gun strapped to your thigh. Not compensating are you?"

"No more than you are," she purred in reply. "Penis envy is a real bitch, isn't it, Fylan?"

Jim snorted, turning away from the woman. He picked up the television remote, flicking on the suite's flatscreen, and waved her away. "Enjoy yourself. Don't go too hard on him."

Mona didn't reply, though he heard the sound of the hotel door opening, and then, "Jeron? Are we going?"

"Yeah," Jeron muttered as he dragged himself to his feet. He shot Jim a dirty look as he walked past, his expression clearly saying 'You owe me for this.'

"See you later," Jim told him with a slight nod of his head.

"Yeah, later," Jeron grumbled.

Mona raised her voice, "Let's go, Dodson. Time's a-wasting and that jerky finger of yours isn't going to fix itself!"

* * *

"So, boys and girls, today I have a very special announcement to make," Tony said as he came into the room. "I know that you're all doing a very good job on the nanotech projects that I've been asking you to work on, but I'm afraid that I'm going to have to ask you to box it up and ship it off to R&D's fifth floor. They haven't got enough to do up there already and I want them to sweat a little."

Despite the quiet ripple of laughter through the room, some disgruntled looks were exchanged as researchers began to shuffle their papers and close their laptops. Chet was looking around the room, a smug look upon his face, and I forced myself to look away from him and to focus upon Tony. Such a prat.

"I know, a lot of you are probably very angry with me after all of the overtime and hard work you've put into this project. I get it. Honestly, I do. But I'm putting all of you up to bigger and better things today. Jarvis?"

"Sir?" the familiar voice echoed around the room surprising some of the other employees, including Adam, who had never heard the AI system speak.

"Could you please kill the lights and bring up our afternoon presentation?" Tony asked as he stepped out of the way of the room's white board and projector.

"Certainly, sir," Jarvis replied and instantly the room dimmed, the projector humming to life. Across the board, images of distant galaxies and clusters of stars were cast. Tony grinned at the room as he looked around.

"I have made a decision, after careful consultation with several of our brightest researchers and interns - Mr. Li, Mr. Samuels, and Miss Alexander -" I froze in my seat, flushing red as I felt several sets of eyes rest upon me and shifted uncomfortably under the hard gazes. Tony hardly seemed fazed, however, and merely carried on. "- and, of course, the man of the hour, our own Dave Hendricks, floor supervisor, who very kindly permitted me to ruin your day and take away all of your hard work. Mr. Hendricks has given the green light to a new project on the floor to begin work on the world's first ever inter dimensional travel system."

The slide changed, displaying a 3D-simulation of what the proposed transporter was to do. I watched in silence as a human was engulfed in a jet of light and vanished from view; the simulation panned out, now displaying a second transporter where the human reappeared in another flash of light.

"This has never been attempted before by any other company on Earth. At least that I know of anyway. No one is as ambitious or as smart as us, after all." There were some appreciative claps from around the floor and another ripple of laughter as Tony continued to work the crowd like an expert showman. "We are testing the limits of science and, should we succeed, we are unveiling the truth behind what our world affectionately calls magic. But we know there are answers, that magic can be explained away with reason and logic, that it's nothing but the stories we were told as children. And we also know that a giant Norse god randomly falling from the sky just can't happen because of some fairy dust or exceptionally cute shoes."

The slide changed again, earning a hearty laugh as a picture of Thor flashed up on the screen, a set of sparkling red shoes photoshopped over his feet rather crudely.

"That's why I'm asking you - some of the brightest young minds that this company has and in many cases the future of Stark Industries' Research and Development Team - to undertake this project. Now it won't be easy, it will be gruelling and we're going to have to ignore many ethical issues when we begin our test trials, but eventually, it will reward us. Ladies and gentlemen, we are on the precipice of a new age in human history, an age when man will know the stars and know the inhabitants of the stars better than our ancestors might ever have dreamed. And so today, I present to you the opportunity to be a catalyst, to usher in a new dawn for mankind, and to enjoy all fruits that will be borne of your labours."

The slide changed again, displaying what was by now the familiar schematic of the transporter. Tony launched into the specifications quickly, walking to the board where he would indicate a certain mechanism or describe the intended science behind the de-atomisation of a test object. As he spoke, I could feel the air in the room begin to change from mild aggravation to eagerness and eventually to a confidence that seemed to charge everyone around me with an infectious enthusiasm for the project.

If there was one thing I had learnt about Tony over the last several months when watching him perform in this way, it was that he had a charisma and showmanship that surpassed that of so many others. In the grander scheme of things, there were few other CEOs and inventors who could excite a crowd this way and I was left to believe that it had nothing to do with the fact that Tony moonlighted as a masked superhero or that he was an eccentric to start with. When it came to people like those in this room, who were all brilliant and highly skilled at what they did, superheroes and eccentricities would only amuse for so long. It was his drive, his passion for the science, and the fact that he spoke their language that won them over.

He was just as brash as anyone on the floor, just as demanding and demeaning when he found something that he disliked as a floor supervisor like Dave Hendricks would be. I'd heard whispers of the private meetings some unfortunate researchers had had with him in the past; they would debate him blindly, forced to defend their hypotheses and argue against his own logic when chances were that he had already made up his mind about the fate of that research in the hours before the meeting even began.

Tony was one of them in the end and that was why they loved him like they did; it was no doubt why Stark Industries had such a reputation for loyalty among employees. They loved him chiefly because when you took away the suit, his billions, and his lifestyle, he was just another science geek like the rest of the employees.

As he neared the end of the presentation, he asked Jarvis to turn the lights back on and then looked around the room, scanning our faces with interest as we blinked furiously in the sudden light.

"Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I've asked a very good friend of mine to come on board to help you with the physics of this entire operation. Doctor Bruce Banner, ladies and gentlemen," Tony extended a hand, gesturing towards the door as polite applause filled the air. I smiled, watching as Bruce stepped through the door, waving shyly as he walked towards Tony. "Dr. Banner is highly renowned for his work in gamma radiation; he studied at Penn State University and obtained his degree in physics with a dissertation on the weaponisation of gamma particles, in which he is an expert. Do me a favour and treat your guest well, you won't like him angry."

I chuckled, watching as Bruce bowed his head and murmured something to Tony who clapped him on the shoulder, exchanging with him in a low voice. Tony laughed after a few moments and then glanced around the floor, "That'll be it. Box everything in here up and mark it for the staff to take upstairs. Tomorrow the real fun begins."

* * *

"Fylan, do you have eyes on the suspect?" Craig's voice crackled into his ear and Jim peered around the corner of the table he and Jeron were currently hidden behind curiously, scanning the room for any sign of the dark figure that they had been tailing after in the factory.

"Negative," he replied after a few moments of scanning. "Jeron and I are moving along the west corridor, what's your location?"

"Main floor, Mona's still on the rafters," Craig replied as Jim motioned for Jeron to follow him out from behind the table. "Don't let this guy get away, I want him hauled into custody."

Jim was silent, setting his jaw as he kept his arm stretched out in front of himself, scanning the dark corridor quickly as he and Jeron continued to move as one unit. He thought of the body that they had discovered on a table in the main hall. It'd been mutilated just like the others, but this time even Jim had felt close to throwing up. There had been no medical examiner to carefully cover up the snapped ribs by bending them back into the woman's body. Instead, they flailed out of her back, stretching towards the sky like wings.

After a bit of prompting, Jeron had returned to the factory, agreeing to search the rest of the mill for their suspect. The woman's body had only recently gone into rigour, meaning that her death hadn't occurred long before they arrived at all.

Jeron suddenly stopped and Jim turned, lifting his eyebrows expectantly as his partner glanced back towards a closed up office.

"Did you hear that?" Jeron whispered.

"No," Jim shook his head, brow furrowing. He looked towards the door and carefully waved his gun in its direction, "there?"

Jeron nodded.

Jim leaned towards his collar and the microphone that had been pinned to it, saying quietly, "Craig, west corridor. Possible disturbance."

"Copy that; let's go, Mona."

"Stay where you are. Jeron and I will check it out," Jim said quickly, "it's probably rats again. No back up yet."

"All right, Fylan, we'll remain on standby. Give us a shout if you need us up there."

Jim didn't reply.

They didn't need to open up the office to find a couple of rats and let the guy go free. Mona had sighted him somewhere near the western corridor and was now among the rafters and looking around the main hall with Craig. The only exits would be left unguarded if they joined he and Jeron in the west corridor.

Jeron gave him a pointed look as he headed for the door and Jim shook his head at the other man. They could argue about the tactics later.

"Cover me," Jim ordered Jeron as he reached for the handle.

Jeron nodded, "You got it," he said as he lifted his gun a little higher, his grasp tightening on the weapon as he waited. Jim turned back to the handle, trying it. Nothing. He tried again to no avail and then a third time. The flashlight he had been carrying had grown dim, but still offered enough light for him to check that there was nothing obstructing the door after his failed attempts to open it.

He frowned, looking back at Jeron, and then moved to step back when something on the floor caught his eye as the flashlight flicked across it. He paused, casting the light over it again and felt his heart pick up speed. A strange liquid was leaking from beneath the doorway; it oozed slowly, thick and black, almost like oil.

"What the hell is that?" Jeron demanded as he took a few steps backwards.

"I don't know," Jim said, shaking his head before he tugged at his collar, "Craig, Mona, we need you."

"Roger wilco, amigo," Craig replied instantly. "We're on our way."

Jim nodded, taking a step back from the door as he waited beside Jeron for Craig and Mona. This was it. Whatever it was, this had to be it. Six more people had turned up dead in the span of three days. That was two people every day. The woman on the table in the main hall made seven. He felt sick at the thought, for if she was the seventh, wouldn't there have to be an eighth?

A sudden, high pitched shriek brought Jim crashing back to reality and he tensed, listening to the wail as it continued to come from within the room. It was the most agonising noise he had ever heard in his life, causing the hair on the back of his neck to stand on end and Jeron to shrink beside him, his eyes growing wide. He lifted his gun higher, his heart hammering in his chest as he waited, hoping it would end.

There was a crash from within the room and the screaming intensified.

"SOMEBODY!" the woman screamed so loudly that it sounded painful, "SOMEBODY, _PLEASE_!"

"Jim..." Jeron's voice was faint in his ears. "Jim, we have to do something."

"Hold your position!" Craig roared in their ears, "Mona and I are in route and will be with you in a minute."

"We don't have a minute," Jeron responded, "this woman is dying, Craig!" There was another crash and the wailing cut for a moment, before it began again. "Jim, come on!"

He glanced back at Jeron, then nodded. They were in it together. This was a judgment call.

"We're moving on the target," he told Craig as he took a step forward. Craig let out a long string of swearwords and Jim tugged out his earpiece, letting it dangle loosely as he looked over his shoulder at Jeron again. "You cover me."

"You got it," Jeron said, lifting his gun as Jim faced the door again. He lifted his foot, kicking at the door once, then twice, and a third time before the heavy wood splintered and the door flew backwards.

The screaming immediately stopped and the only noise Jim could hear was the sound of his own breathing.

"What the hell is going on?" Jeron whispered.

"I don't have a clue," Jim replied as he lifted his flashlight, his hands shaking slightly as he cast the dim light around the room. "Ma'am?" he called out. "Ma'am, can you hear me?"

There was a low moan and Jim took a cautious step forward, pushing at the door as he and Jeron advanced upon the darkened office.

"Ma'am?" he called out again. He motioned for Jeron to follow and took a step into the office. His heart was in his throat, but he continued on, keeping his arm steady as he began to sweep the room. "Ma'am, can you hear me?"

Pain exploded in the back of Jim's head as he was thrown across the room, slamming into the wall of the office. He fell to the ground, his gun and flashlight falling from his hands only to be swallowed by the darkness. He blinked several times, quickly feeling around himself as the splitting pain in his head continued and desperately searched the floor for the flashlight which had gone out.

The floor was slick, covered with the same dark liquid that had been oozing out from beneath the door and an odour not unlike rotten eggs hung in the air of the room. He grabbed for items as he searched the immediate area around himself frantically, desperate to find his weapon.

He needed it, he needed it now!

Shit!

Bang! Jim threw himself onto the ground, covering his head as Jeron fired his gun several more times, shouting incoherently. Bang! Bang! Bang!

There was a loud crash and Jeron screamed in terror before the noise turned to something far more guttural, almost like his was choking.

"Jeron!" he bellowed, scrambling forward. His hand brushed over the butt of his gun and he grabbed for it. Pushing himself to his feet, Jim automatically lifted the weapon while he searched the room for any sign of Jeron's body.

"Jeron!" he shouted again. "Dodson, where the hell are you?!"

"Jim..." Jeron's voice was feeble, trickling in from the corridor and he rounded, sprinting out into the dimly lit hall. Jeron laid on the floor, his hands pressed over his stomach. Blood soaked through his shirt, pooling over his hands and onto the floor and Jim dropped to his knees, barely taking the time to check to make sure that the hall was clear.

"Craig!" he barked into the microphone that was still clipped to his collar. "Craig, where are you?!" He gingerly replaced his earpiece before pressing his hands over Jeron's, adding more pressure to the wound.

"The stairs just fell out in front of us, Jim," Craig replied. "I don't know what the hell happened but they just buckled. We barely made it back onto the platform in time. We're looking for an alternate way up there. Mona's trying the elevator shaft. What the hell's going on?"

"We need a medic," Jim replied, "Dodson's down."

"Fuck!" Craig hissed. "Did you get the guy?"

"No," Jim shook his head, "no, I didn't. Did you get your eyes on him, Jeron?" Jeron made a soft choking noise and Jim reached out, carefully cupping the side of the other man's face, "It's okay. I'm here. Help is coming." He pulled away, replacing his hand on top of his other and Jeron's own, and tried not to let the sensation of Jeron's warm blood flowing over his hands and soaking into his skin disturb him.

Jeron made another noise that sounded almost like a laugh. "Did they teach you NYPD boys that at the academy?" he wheezed after a few moments.

Jim smiled, looking back down at his hands and where they rested on Jeron's middle. "Yeah, they taught me that."

"Figures," Jeron muttered, his eyes beginning to close.

"Jeron, no," Jim shook his head. "Jeron, open your eyes. Look at me!"

"It's...it's not a man, Jim," Jeron's voice shook. "I don't know what it is, but it's not human."

"Jeron, tell me what he looked like," Jim whispered, placing his hand at the back of the other man's head. He carefully began to lift Jeron up, propping him in a sitting position with his knee at the other man's back. He coughed several times, blood flying from his lips and dribbling down his chin, but after he'd relaxed, his breathing began to even out and his eyes fluttered open again. He stared up at Jim from behind his cracked glasses, his brow knitting together for a moment before his face relaxed. Jim nodded at him, asking carefully, "Better?"

Jeron smiled wearily, "Breathing's a bit easier," he admitted after a few tense moments.

"Help is coming," Jim repeated himself. "Just stay with me."

"Head of a jackal," Jeron mumbled. "He...he's not a man, Jim."

"What is he?" Jim asked.

"I-I don't know," his voice was growing fainter and Jim hurriedly gripped Jeron's chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilting his head back to better see the other man's face. His eyes were closed.

"Open your eyes, you need to look at me. I need you to stay with -"

"Fylan!" Jim's attention snapped towards the end of the corridor. Mona was sprinting towards he and Jeron, her dark hair swept up into a ponytail that swung back and forth as she ran. "What's happened?"

"This guy got him in the stomach," Jim said, shaking his head. "I don't know what the extent is, but there's a lot of blood."

"Let me take it from here," she said as she knelt down on Jeron's other side. "I've got training for this sort of thing." When he didn't immediately move, she looked up at him, her eyes narrowing, "I've got it, Jim. Trust me."

He pulled his hand away from Jeron's middle and eased the other man down onto his back after Mona instructed him to do so. She checked his pulse and murmured something to him that Jim didn't quite catch, though it made Jeron let out another breathy, choked laugh.

She looked back up at him, "You should go," she told him. "There's an emergency exit down the hall and to the right. Take it and get to the main floor. Find Craig and bring the help up here as soon as they arrive."

Jim looked down at Jeron, feeling torn, when the other man carefully reached out, one of his blood soaked hands wrapping around Jim's arm. He pulled Jim forward with surprising strength, his lips nearly touching Jim's ear as he growled, "Go get the bastard."

Jeron released his arm, his hand falling back to his middle as his face twisted in pain and Jim looked up at Mona, who was watching him carefully. She gave a slow, almost imperceptible nod that he took as her blessing and then, sparing a final look at his partner, seized Jeron's gun from the floor. He stood, tucking his own gun into the waist of his jeans and checked Jeron's gun before he looked down at his two team members.

Mona was more forceful now, "Go. I've got it."

He ran quickly, his footfalls echoing loudly along the empty halls as he raced towards the emergency exit. There would no longer be a need to hide in the shadows. The bastard was on his way out, there wasn't a doubt in Jim's mind.

He stopped before the emergency exit door and kicked it open quickly, an alarm bell howling angrily as the door swung backwards, slamming into the wall of the emergency stairwell. Nothing. Jim hurried through the doorway and then charged down the stairs, ripping out his earpiece as Craig demanded loudly to know what was happening and where Jim was.

The only thing he needed to know was one thing Craig had let slip - that he had glimpsed the perp heading for the main doors of the factory. He'd disagreed with Jeron about the man's appearance. He'd said that he'd seen a tall man wearing a deep blue overcoat and fedora heading for the doors, an umbrella with a silver handle tucked beneath his arm.

If that was what he looked like, he couldn't be that hard to find, Jim reasoned. There wasn't any rain due to hit Toronto for another five days according to the news he'd seen this afternoon. Even if it was dark outside, he'd still be able to catch sight of him.

Jim broke through the door at the bottom of the stairs, the alarm bells still howling angrily from somewhere above as he raced across the main floor towards the doors that they had walked into hours before. He leapt over old textiles and and slipped around the table that held the woman's body, no longer conscious of the dull ache that had been raging in the back of his head.

He pushed the doors open, stumbling out into the dusk of the September night and spun on his heel, his gun outstretched before himself as he struggled to find the man.

He had to be nearby still. He could just make out the distant flashing lights of an ambulance and police cars and so he turned away from them, deciding that there would be no way the attacker had headed towards the city. That would be suicide. Instead, Jim began to run towards the back of the textile factory. He supposed that it had once been a parking lot behind the mill, but since its closing, tall weeds had sprouted up through the asphalt, hiding the smooth surface of the earth from view. In the distance, there was a forest and he knew that if the murderer reached the line of trees, he would be gone for good.

Heart pounding in his chest, Jim rounded the corner, again checking the area behind the mill for their perpetrator. He ground his teeth together upon finding that there was nothing to be found and then faced the field. He could just make out the faintest silhouette of what appeared to be a man.

It was him. True to Craig's word, he wore a long, dark blue overcoat and hat. Beneath his arm he carried something that glinted in the fading light of the sun in the same way that silver might.

It had to be him.

Jim raced forward as fast as his feet could carry him, the sound of the alarms in the mill and the wails of the ambulance and police cars echoing in his ears loudly as he sprinted through the field. He began closing the distance between the two of them, at first gradually, and then rapidly, it was only when he was perhaps thirty feet away that he skidded to a halt, realising that the man had stopped. He was _waiting_ for Jim.

Jim quickly lifted Jeron's weapon, his voice steady as he called out, "Put your hands in the air and turn around!"

The man didn't move.

"I said put your hands in the air and TURN AROUND!" Jim shouted, close to losing his temper. If it wasn't for the fact that Fury would have his head, he'd have shot the man already.

"Very well," the man said, his voice was tinged with a strange accent, one that Jim couldn't place, but it was eerie, almost ethereal. He tightened his grasp upon his gun, watching as the man turned on his heel very slowly. His finger slid over the trigger, pressuring it only slightly. Just a little more and it would be over.

The man faced him.

His face was weathered, dark, and battle scarred from who knew what. His dark eyes pierced Jim as they fixed upon him, but the younger man remained firm, committing this face to memory. Around his neck, the man wore a long necklace with a strange medallion dangling from it and the handle of his umbrella was a silver's eagle head. They'd been right, this guy was fetishising Egyptian mythology. He was absolutely obsessed with it, that was all.

"Get on your knees," Jim ordered, his voice sounding very far away suddenly.

No response.

"NOW!" he shouted again.

The man's brow slowly pulled together and Jim felt his eyes widen in surprise as the man's face began to change. The skin of his face began to melt away and the bones in the man's face began to morph, twisting and pulling to create a long snout. The fedora that had topped his head fell away, landing on the ground, as two sharp ears protruded from the top of the man ‑ no, jackal's head.

Head of a jackal, Jeron had said.

"What the hell are you?" Jim breathed in shock.

"I," the man said, the jackal's mouth forming the words perfectly as he strode forward, "am Am-heh."

Jim fired off a round, which caught the jackal in the shoulder. Am-heh stopped, staggering backwards for a second before he glanced down at the wound, touching it lightly. He lifted the bloodstained fingers to his mouth, his tongue darting out to taste the blood, and then he sighed deeply, almost contentedly.

"Do you truly believe that the Devourer of Worlds shall be stopped by a mortal's weapon?" he asked, looking up at Jim again.

"I don't know, but I'm willing to take my chances," Jim replied, firing again as Am-heh began to advance. This one caught him in the chest, but the jackal did not stagger again, instead he kept walking. It was as if nothing had struck him, despite the red stain that blossomed from the heart of the wound.

Jim kept firing, each bullet meeting its mark, but none stopping the jackal until the it was suddenly upon him, snarling angrily as it brought its umbrella up, slamming it into his hands so that he dropped his gun. Jim moved to dive for it, but Am-heh seized him by either side of the head, drawing him close.

His breath reeked of the same rotten eggs that had fouled the room and as the jackal's mouth opened, the sound of Jeron's scream of terror fell from its lips, echoing in Jim's ears. There was a crash, more incoherent shouting, and then the same shriek of the woman that had drawn he and Jeron into the jackal's trap. He tried to keep his eyes open, to keep from clapping his hands over his ears, but the sound was far too much, he needed it to stop, to -

"You mortals are foolish beings," Am-heh growled, releasing Jim just as suddenly as he had seized him. "And I shall make game of you all. Are you afraid now? I even warned you..."

As the realisation suddenly struck him, Jim reached behind himself, pulling the other gun from behind himself which he brandished defensively.

"You can use bodies?" he demanded. "You were there when we looked at them?"

Am-heh bared his teeth, perhaps in a sneer, maybe even a smile, Jim couldn't be sure of anything. But just as he fired off another shot, aiming directly for the jackal's heart, a clawed hand caught the side of his head with enough force to send him to the ground.

"You, though," Am-heh's voice said from somewhere above him as his vision blurred and began to blacken, "I shall save. We shall meet again, Agent Fylan."

* * *

Atum drew back from the water that he had been scrying over, turning away from the dais to walk towards his balcony. Am-heh had let the mortal live... He'd been impressed with the man's bravery, however naive it had been, despite the fact that the mortal had seemingly destroyed the god's current vessel.

A vessel, as all Kemetian gods knew, was to have certain qualities. They were to be physically fit, their bodies capable of carrying out the exhausting job of two souls occupying them rather than one. They were to be agile, strong, and perhaps even intelligent. There were many gods who would ignore these requirements, instead assuming the body of a mortal that could only sustain them, but it never lasted for long.

Not for as long as he would need.

The cool breeze of the night flowed through his hair as he came to stand at the rail of his balcony, gazing out at the dark city. The people had by now discovered that Kemet had released the demonic god Am-heh from its underbelly and, while reassured by Amun that none of the other kingdoms, particularly Asgard and Olympus, would be bearing down upon them for such foolishness, there was a change in the air. No longer did their celebrations feel quite as lively, no longer did the people spend their nights out, enjoying themselves as they rightfully should.

The days of Earth had long past and with them, the pressures of what the mortals called Egyptian society. Here, all were prosperous, all shared in the pleasures and the goods that, upon Earth, had come to the royalty and aristocracy alone.

This left him concerned and worried for the future of Kemet.

While Asgard and Olympus, their greatest allies and, at other times, their worst enemies, had agreed to stand by and allow for a natural progression, he could not guarantee it. The people had heard what they thought to be rumours of the Asgardian princes falling in love with mortals and it left them confident that Asgard would break their treaty to intervene. Their own interests were at risk, the commoners had whispered, confident that they knew so much of the politics between their worlds.

Yet Odin had agreed despite the 'interests' of Asgard. The 'interests' of Thor and Loki were put down to be nothing more than the feelings of two young men, by their father, nothing more than two heartsick fools who would learn their place in their world in due time. They would forget their dalliances with Earth's women and return to those that they were better suited to upon Asgard. It was in the Asgardian kingdom's best interest to sacrifice

However, that too brought Atum little comfort and so he was forced to choose a vessel. He alone was left in the position to apprehend and detain Am-heh and because he alone could control the god, he would venture to Earth. He turned, slowly walking back into his chambers to approach the dais again. He peered down into the clear water, watching as the face of the young man appeared again. He was sat up, safe thankfully, the wound at the side of his head being tended to by a healer dressed in a uniform.

Atum had watched him for the last week, studying his life and habits. He was at times too emotional for Atum's liking, but overall he seemed to be an adequate fit. He was strong, healthy, and appeared to be relatively intelligent for his age. These were the factors that Atum had always relied upon to choose his vessels. Perhaps, most importantly however, the young man was close to the mortal investigation of Am-heh.

So long as he was in one piece then.

Atum turned away from the dais, waving his hand over the water to banish the image of the young man's face. He knew all that he needed to. Now he would wait until dawn and then, at last, it would begin.

* * *

_**A/N:**__ I'm not sure why I'm managing to write as much as I am in the last few weeks, but hey, no complaints. However, don't get comfortable because I am doing NaNoWriMo (I'm a sadist!). So a majority of my efforts will be diverted off to cranking out 50,000 words and hatching a novel idea I've been sitting on for a few months. But I'll still update this story occasionally._

_Anyway, thank you to everyone who read and reviewed! It was very much appreciated as were all of the follows or favourites. Thanks a bunch, guys!_

_Oh, and by the way, you should all seriously get over to see KMD88 if you haven't already (I will never stop promoting her, ever) because her stories are lovely and she's just an all around great lady. _

_Her Fandral story __**When They Fall **__is utterly hilarious (seriously, just read this story, even if you don't know a lot about Fandral or really like him that much) and her sequel to __**Chasing the Storm**__ is now live as __**Into the Eye of the Storm **__and being updated regularly and utterly wonderful! Please do make an effort to pop over to see her, she's fabulous and I absolutely insist._

* * *

**Reviews:**

**Loki'sdreamer:** (3) No worries! Everyone gets caught up with life at times, myself included so there's never any need to apologise. It's totally fine. :) And yeah, I really feel for Ben. He's in a pretty sympathetic position in my mind. (4) It's pretty gruesome! And funnily enough, I'm a big and long time fan of Hannibal. I have been for years; that sort of stuff fascinates me (from a psychological standpoint more than anything). I only recently started watching the show and found out that in episode 5 they use the Blood Eagle as the method of murder when I was reading up on it. Funny how that works.  
**sara-janie:** I'm very glad to hear that you enjoyed the first and do hope that you continue to enjoy the second as it's liable to end up being just as long, haha; thanks!  
**Ortho Ellis:** Ahh, there's plenty to come on that. :) Just sit tight! And thanks! Was quite pleased with it.  
**CharmiaArkenstone:** Thank you! I'm always a fan of their parts, too. xx  
**KMD88:** We're equally terrible boyfriends, but I think we might want to refrain from giving gifts. Our actual boyfriends might get a little bit annoyed if we go that far, haha! They already seem to with how much we talk! And you're way too nice! Seriously. Thank you though. :3 And look! I didn't kill anyone! Aren't you so happy?! :) Well, I haven't killed anyone yet that is, but still. Five chapters in and no one you like is marked for certain and immediate death! I am excited to smash it all down though. :D  
**StarletSpotlight:** Oh, they're on their way! I hadn't actually thought about that, to be honest. I guess it's a wait and see thing. :p And that's probably one of my favourite moments with Thor in the first. It just tickled me the whole time I was writing it out. But I do like him as a character so much and I'm really relieved he's well received. And you might have the right day in mind!


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: I don't own any Marvel characters, just the OCs and plot.

* * *

**Chapter Six: The Vessel**

Everything hurt for some strange reason; his head especially. It felt as though it was splitting in two and even thinking felt like it took more effort than it should have. He continued to lay very still, hoping that whatever was wrong would pass as it always seemed to, but gradually he began to become aware of a strange humming noise around him.

_Voices._

"...Do the doctors know what happened?" a woman asked, her voice trembled as she spoke, as though she had been given a great fright. She sounded so familiar.

"They think it was just a concussion that the EMTs missed," a man replied, his voice was low and dulcet. "They did a scan as soon as they got him here and everything's checked out all right."

"When can he come home?" the woman asked after a few moments.

"As soon as he wakes up," the man told her, his tone just as soothing as before. "He needs a couple week's rest after this and S.H.I.E.L.D. will want to debrief him after he's had his bed rest. Jim's not going back out into the field until they give the okay, Raleigh."

_Raleigh._

Almost immediately, the memories of the young woman who was almost certainly standing beside his bed flooded his mind. He thought of her dark hair and the way her pale mouth twisted when she was annoyed and of how he'd last thought of kissing her and hugging her before going to sleep..._ What then?_ he wondered. _What had happened after he had gone to sleep?_

"Thanks, Craig," she murmured, "are his doctors around right now? I mean, I just want to talk to them. Maybe get a little more info that way I can tell his mother when I give her a call later on."

"I'll take a look," Craig said, "I need some coffee anyway. Fury's had me in here way too long and, no offence, love, but I'm not a big fan of hospitals."

"No, it's fine. If you see them just send one in or something, please," Raleigh told him gently.

"No problem," he said, "do you want something from the cafeteria?"

"A sandwich, maybe, if that's all right."

"Sure," Craig said kindly. "I'll bring one back up with me for you. Any kind all right?"

"Yeah," Raleigh agreed. "Anything's good with me really."

Craig didn't reply this time and so he was left to wonder if the man that he knew as he commander had left the room. After a few moments of silence, Raleigh sighed softly, breaking the stillness in the air.

Her hand was gentle upon his own and her fingers carefully worked between his. Very slowly he began to open his eyes, wincing at the bright florescent lights that hung above his bed. Raleigh slowly swam into focus and he could feel his lips curl into a smile as he stared at her. Her thumb moved back and forth across their hands, while she stared ahead, her jaw set tightly.

There were circles beneath her eyes and his smile fixed. She'd been having the nightmare again, no doubt. It had been weeks since she'd last dreamt of William's death, but whenever the nightmares started up it left her lying awake, too afraid to go to sleep. He'd asked a few times about them, but there was never a satisfactory answer. He just knew they always ended in fire.

He licked his lips, then, ignoring the throbbing in his head, and said carefully, "Hey."

Raleigh whipped around, her grasp on his hand tightening and let out a small gasp. "Jim?" she said, her face breaking into a wide smile. She released his hand, throwing herself at him for a hug instead.

"Hey, you," he mumbled into her hair as he wrapped his arms around her. "Hope I didn't give you too much of a scare there."

She laughed weakly, the noise muffled into his shoulder. "Coulson came to get me at work, I thought you were dead at first.."

He gripped her arms, carefully prying her off, and watched as she looked away, hurriedly wiping her face. She laughed again, glancing up at him. "Sorry," she mumbled, her voice choked. "I just worried."

"You don't need to worry about me," he mumbled, pressing his lips together. "I take good care of myself."

She frowned, "Then why are you in here?"

He sighed, wondering the same thing himself, and then shrugged, joking, "I don't know, I guess they just need to fill beds."

"That's not funny, Jim."

"It's fine," he soothed, tightening his grasp on her arms. He pulled her closer, searching her face for a sign that she understood, that she was certain of what he said, and then released her arms, carefully tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

Why did this feel so strange? It was Raleigh. He loved her. He'd loved her for as long as he could remember. And yet this felt so...foreign. He swallowed hard, forcing himself to stare into her eyes; they'd always been such a peculiar, ochre hue that bordered upon golden, her irises had never been hazel or similar to Ben's dark brown. It had always fascinated him, staring into her eyes to see the rich wheaten colours better...

"Fylan!" Craig.

He tore his gaze away from Raleigh, blinking in surprise as Craig sauntered into the hospital room, his face shocked and his arms stretched out wide.

"Jesus Christ, you fucker, you gave us all a fucking heart attack," Craig exclaimed as he brushed past Raleigh to hug Jim tightly. Jim winced at the embrace, carefully patting Craig's back, and cleared his throat to signal that it was time to let go. Craig pulled back after a few seconds more and looked at Raleigh, saying, "Sorry about that, I didn't mean to intrude upon your moment, love."

"It's fine," Raleigh said shaking her head abashedly.

Craig nodded at her, looking back at Jim, "You feelin' all right?"

"Like I've got a knife in my head but otherwise, yeah, fine," he admitted, avoiding Raleigh's gaze. She'd say something about that to a doctor he was certain.

"Well, you're in the right place for pain," Craig said as he reached out towards the machine beside his bed. "They had enough sense to put you on a morphine drip and you're in luck because old Craig knows how to use one of these..."

"Lots of practice?" he asked dryly.

"More than I care to admit," Craig replied with a wink. He looked back at Raleigh as he began to increase the dose of morphine on Jim's drip, "They're out of sandwiches."

"Anything would've been fine, really."

"I wouldn't have felt right if I chose wrong, did you maybe want to have a wander and look in the caf on your own there, love?" Jim could hear just the slightest hint of a command in Craig's voice and Raleigh's face darkened for a moment as she clearly caught the inference as well, but then she smiled, nodding at him.

"Do you need anything?"

"Nope," Craig shook his head. "All good on my end."

He turned, watching as Raleigh walked from the room slowly, and then faced Jim again. He exhaled slowly and folded his arms across his chest, smiling reassuringly at the younger man as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, "Doctors say you have a bit of a concussion. You've been sidelined for the next two weeks until they clear you medically."

"Nothing too serious then," Jim muttered, shifting himself into a better position in the bed.

Craig shrugged, "Fury wants you debriefed as soon as you're stateside; I'm trying to put him off for a while but I don't know how well that's going to go over once we get back to the city."

"What about Jeron?" Jim asked, uninterested in hearing about his own fate. He didn't care about Fury or the questioning or his head. What mattered was Jeron. He needed to know if the other man had made it...

Craig's smiled fixed, "Jeron's a bit tricky, Jim. Maybe that should wait."

"Tell me," he ordered, the throbbing in his head growing worse as the conversation wore on. "I want to know now."

"He'll make it," Craig told him quietly, "the doctors have him in the ICU still but he's going to make it, barring any major catastrophes in the next few days."

Jim nodded slowly, carefully absorbing the news as a sense of relief washed over him. Jeron would live. "What can you tell me?"

"Not now," Craig said, his eyes shifting towards the door nervously. "Your lady friend doesn't have the clearance and if she comes back -"

"Craig."

"Jim, let me do my job. I'll tell you what I can, when I can. Until then, you're going to sit tight, all right?"

He gnashed his teeth together, not replying, and Craig frowned at him, reaching for his morphine drip again.

"What are you doing?" Jim asked warily. He didn't put anything past Craig; the guy had more knowledge of how to torture a man than anyone else he knew at S.H.I.E.L.D. save Agent Romanoff. Craig turned, arching an eyebrow at him, and so he demanded, "What are you doing with my morphine?"

"Increasing it so that you shut up and go to sleep."

* * *

_Moonlight poured into the long hallway through the large windows as he strode down the hall, his bare feet light upon the cool stone. A gentle wind rippled through the air, carrying the familiar scent of spices and incense from the chambers of the High Priests, and it chilled him as he continued towards the end of the darkened hall. Goosebumps rippled across his bare skin in waves and he wasn't sure if it was the cold air or the tight feeling of nerves in the pit of his stomach._

_He turned the corner of the corridor, continuing along his darkened path, and quickened his pace. In the distance, he could hear the sound of music, a familiar tune and chorus of voices peeled from far below as he began to pass guards, the hall brightening for the first time. Torches hung from the walls, their amber flames flickering and dancing in time to the music of the evening. The guards who he passed bowed their heads reverently as he moved past them._

_He spared glances at them as he went, noting who looked disheveled and who had yet to polish their weapons. Some clutched spears in their hands while others had quivers slung across their backs, the fletchings of their arrows just visible. Of those who had not shaved their heads, their dark hair was groomed neatly and fell no further than their chins; their faces were smooth with no sign of a beard in sight._

_The singing was louder now and he slowly came to a halt at the sight of another man who appeared to be waiting for him._

_"They do not know," he murmured, approaching the other man. He gestured towards the end of the hall where the singing was still echoing._

_"No," the other man replied, shaking his head. "It was decided that it must be you to tell them."_

_"When they learn of what must transpire, they will be afraid."_

_"There is no choice, Atum, you know this, my friend."_

_"Amun," he sighed, turning towards the voices again, "I ask very little of you in my impending absence, but I must insist that you begin a dialogue with the people. I cannot return to them until this is finished."_

_"I know this," Amun nodded, "but you must be the one to tell them of your intent. They will understand better if it is you who tells them that you intend to take a vessel. They have no desire to see me after Am-heh's escape. They want you."_

_"This is outrageous," he muttered, glancing around to make sure that none of the guards were listening to their conversation._

_"This is politics," Amun said with a shrug. "Give the people what they want. You will be gone in the morning so there is no need to fear their reaction."_

_"I do not fear the reaction of Kemetians, I resent that I am being put forth as a political tool by a man I thought to be a friend," he hissed._

_"I am your friend. We have been for millennia."_

_"If that were the case then you may have told me that I would be venturing out to quell a crowd of men and women who are angry with you for allowing Am-heh free," he retorted._

_"And thus you have the opportunity to play the part of their saviour yet again," Amun replied, his voice soothing. "The people feel a kinship to you, Atum."_

_He sighed, deciding it was fruitless to push the issue any further. There would be no use in arguing that he did not feel the same kinship for the people of Kemet that they did for him. He was their Creator, their true leader, not equal to any of them._

_"I will speak to them," he conceded at last, motioning towards a young assistant who had been standing off to the side, holding his robes in hand._

_He shrugged on the dark coloured robe, frowning at Amun who looked far too pleased with his decision. He pursed his lips at the other man and then shoved him gently before he pointed a warning finger towards him. "This is the last time."_

_Amun smiled, "Of course," he agreed good-naturedly._

_"And when I have finished with them, you will see that they dissipate from the square," he told Amun, who blanched at the thought. He clapped Amun on the shoulder and as he turned away, remarked, "Consider it a favour to a friend, Amun. A friend that you have had for millennia."_

_Amun's face twisted in a grimace, but he did not protest._

_He turned, leaving Amun behind, and made his way towards the balcony at the end of the hall. The singing and music was louder than ever, ringing in his ears as he stepped out into the dark night to face the people of Kemet..._

Jim jerked awake, sitting up in bed as his chest rose and fell rapidly. He glanced around the room wildly and shifted, the sheets of the bed tangling between his legs.

Where was he?

Panicked, he instinctively reached for his gun when a small hand shot out, grabbing his own. He started at the touch, whirling around to find Raleigh staring up at him in concern. She carefully pushed herself up, drawing the covers closer to her bare chest, and wrapped her fingers around his hand.

"You're home," she told him, her voice was soft, comforting. "It's safe here."

It'd just been another nightmare. The same kind of dream that he'd been having since he'd left the hospital and returned home from Toronto. After having several fitful nights at his mother and father's home in Brooklyn, he'd come to stay with Raleigh in the city but the nightmares and strange dreams had followed, continuing to haunt him.

"Leigh," he began, still unable to shake the disorientation that he felt. "I..."

"It's okay," she soothed, pulling his hand away from the drawer. "It was just a dream, Jim, it's okay. You're home."

He nodded, swallowing hard, and looked around the room again, now recognising it as the bedroom he'd shared with Raleigh whenever he stayed with her. He relaxed slowly, still unable to shake the confusion that plagued him.

"Do you wanna talk about it?" Raleigh asked gently.

He shook his head, slowly laying back in bed. "No," he told her, "I'm fine."

"Was it another nightmare?" she probed.

He nodded this time. "It's not scary... It's just weird."

"How?"

"They feel real," he murmured, unable to explain it to her in any other way. Brow furrowing, he rubbed at his face and continued on, "I feel like I've lived it and am just remembering."

Raleigh started at him for a few moments, clearly struggling with herself to not push any further. Finally, she released his hand and remained quiet despite the concern written across her face. Very slowly, she lay down, resting her head upon his chest and draped her arm across his body.

It didn't make sense. He didn't understand any of it. Why was he suddenly dreaming about a city of gold and chariots and people who were half animal, half human? It made his head hurt again despite the doctors saying his head should have been better by now, that it shouldn't hurt anymore.

He sighed, closing his eyes, and threaded his fingers through her hair carefully. "Let's get some sleep," he said at last. "I'm tired."

She nodded, pressing closer to him, and then lifted herself up just enough to leave a gentle his on his cheek. Without thinking, he reached out, taking her hand, and pressed it to his chest where he held it.

"I love you," she whispered into the darkness.

"Very much," he agreed softly, his eyes closing again.

* * *

"And how is prison treating you?" Loki asked as he walked towards the cell that housed Amora in the dungeons of the palace. "Are you fairing better than myself?"

He came to a halt a few feet away from the cell, watching as the blonde haired woman's dark green eyes narrowed together at the sight of him. She stood, padding towards the front of the cell, and came to a stop at the door, waiting. Loki clasped his hands behind his back, studying her carefully.

Her magic had yet to be returned to her, leaving her pallid and weak looking, yet she appeared perfectly healthy otherwise. Her long blonde hair was swept over one of her shoulders, cascading down to the small of her back in waves and the soft light of the hall highlighted the sharp features of her face as she stared up at him, her face expressionless.

"Don't look so glum," he murmured, taking another step forward, "you might actually make me feel guilty."

She snorted, turning her head away. "You've rarely ever felt guilty for much at all."

"I only meant to say I might feel guilty for holding my hand," he murmured, frowning slightly. "Had Thor not intervened, you would not be here. You know this."

"And yet you've come to me after all this time," she purred, looking up at him again. "Come to return my magic, have you?"

"Hardly," Loki rolled his eyes, "I merely wish to ask what you know of another deity."

"This should prove interesting," she murmured, folding her arms across her chest. "What sort of trouble are the Midgardians in now?"

His eyes narrowed, "None that cannot be handled, I'll have you know."

"Then what might you need me for?" she asked, smirking, "Do I know something that the great Loki does not?"

He pursed his lips together, but continued on anyway, "Tell me of Am-heh. The Kemetian god."

"More a demon than a god," she muttered, her arms falling to her sides. "What do you wish to know?"

"His powers, weaknesses, anything of use."

"And you have no intention of compensating me for my generous dispensing of this information?" she asked, arching a brow at him. He shook his head and she shrugged, turning her back on him. "I suppose that you might wish to return to the library then or venture to Kemet yourself. I do not forgive so easily, Loki."

"Amora, tell me what you know of him."

"Return to me my magic!" she hissed, rounding on her heel.

"I cannot do that," he told her. "It is not possible."

"Liar," she spat. "Had I not attempted to kill that Midgardian bitch you might be more lenient. You are weak." Loki tensed at the mention of Raleigh and Amora's eyes brightened, recognising his anxiousness. "And it's in danger again. Of course..." She laughed softly and then began to walk towards the back of her cell, waving at him dismissively.

Loki slammed his hand against the glass of the cell, causing her to stop, turning just enough to stare at him with an amused expression on her face.

"Tell me," he ordered. "What do you know of Am-heh?"

She hesitated for a moment before she turned again, very slowly, and pressed her lips together as she studied him. For a moment, he feared that she could see everything that he was hiding, as she always had, and he waited, anticipating the barbs that would surely come to pass. She had to know that he had been forbidden from returning to Midgard, that he had not seen Raleigh in nearly a year - well, with the permission of the palace that was. He had slipped between the realms using his magic on several occasions, throwing Heimdall off long enough to spend a night or two here and there in New York, disguised as a raven or cloaked in the shadows, unable to go any further.

Finally, Amora smiled. "Do you miss her?"

"That is not of your concern."

"Ah, so you do," she nodded, beginning to pace the length of her cell much like a hawk circling its prey. "Does the All Father know that the forgotten son would sooner lay with a Midgardian than the nobility of Asgard?"

"Amora, do not test me," he warned sharply.

"Merely wondering," she replied, lifting her shoulders to shrug again. "I find it terribly interesting, you see. Prince Loki, the trickster, the silver-tongued god of mischief, kidnapped from Jotunheim and raised in ignorance cannot even manage to find an acceptable woman, if you can even call those wretches upon Midgard women."

"Envy is not an attractive quality, Amora."

She scoffed, "Do not delude yourself into believing that I might again grace you with my presence in your bed, Loki. I feel no envy, only disgust. As I have said, I do not forgive so easily."

"And do not be so arrogant as to believe you merit the invitation," Loki snapped, his patience beginning to wane. Perhaps Thor had been right, this was fruitless. Reasoning with Amora to benefit Midgard would be impossible, he had told Loki, but he'd disagreed and now here he was, arguing childishly over Raleigh and his heritage.

Amora sobered, coming forward a few feet once more. "If I tell you what you would like to know, what will you do for me?"

"It remains to be seen; it will be dependent upon the quality of the information you give me."

"Hmm, I don't especially care for the sound of that," she said with a heavy sigh. "Surely you can just ask another Kemetian? Would they not be a better source than an Asgardian?"

"Kemet has forged a pact with the All Father mandating that Asgard does not interfere in the capture of Am-heh from Midgard," Loki explained hurriedly. "They will not speak to me."

"Such a shame," she said, not sounding very upset at all.

"What do you know of him, Amora?"

"No more than you," she replied after a few moments. "He means to destroy worlds, just as he always has."

"How can he be stopped?"

She shook her head, "I could not say."

"Amora, tell me!" he thundered, slamming his hand against the glass of the cell again. Her eyes narrowed and she moved quickly, stalking to the front of the cell so that her face was inches from his own, blocked by the glass alone. "Tell me what you know," he repeated himself, lowering his voice to a hushed whisper, his eyes searching her face desperately for any sign of a weakness, of something he could play upon to manipulate her.

"Give me my magic," she demanded, her voice low. "I will tell you all that you desire if you give me what I require."

"No," he told her, his voice firm.

"We can work together, Loki," she whispered, lifting a hand to press it against the glass. "As we did before, I can help you. You need my help, you need what I have, and you have what I desire. Is this such a difficult decision?"

He struggled with himself for a moment. She told him nothing but lies, yet he wanted desperately to have the information he knew she was withholding. Cooperating with her would be of benefit, of use, but she had no intention of protecting Midgard. The vial that hung around his neck and was concealed from her view by his armor felt hot against his chest and he wanted nothing more than to believe that she was again a saviour to him as she had been when their roles were reversed and it was he who was caged like an animal. But she wasn't and she never again would be.

"We can be great again," she breathed, her large green eyes gazing up into his own, glinting in the light. "Don't you remember, Loki?"

He did remember. He remembered all of it vividly: their years together upon Asgard, their secrets and their plans, the touch of her hands and the sensation of her lips upon his skin, but he also remembered her cruelty and madness upon Midgard. She had very nearly killed Raleigh in her madness. That had been an unforgivable sin in his eyes, one that warranted death as he had sworn to the Midgardian woman in the privacy of their retreat, and yet Thor's mercy had stopped him from dealing the death blow.

"Our time has passed," he murmured, pulling away slowly. "Greatness has long since forgotten you, Amora, and now I realise that it is best to leave you here, too."

She made an angry, feral noise and slammed her hands against the glass enclosure, snarling at him furiously, "I will destroy you," she spat. "I will destroy all that you love, all that you cherish, and when you lay broken before me, I shall have my revenge upon you for what you have done to me!"

He stepped back, smirking in spite of himself, "I do not fear you, nor shall I ever. What you know, you know from me, what you have, you have because of me, and if I should so much as ask, you shall be put to the death you deserve. You survive only because I allow it."

"You lie," she hissed, her face twisting with anger, "the All Father would not allow you to hold my fate in your hands. He is not so foolish."

"Perhaps not," Loki chuckled, "though you severely underestimate his apathy towards your fate. Your arrogance has always been your greatest weakness, you know."

She bared her teeth at him, "And when Am-heh destroys Midgard and rips the flesh from the Midgardian's body, what will you have to say then? Will you be in such a joking mood?"

Loki didn't falter, "If that day comes to pass, then I shall come here and finish what I began upon Midgard with you. There will be no one stupid enough to even attempt to stop me and no one with any pity in their hearts for the woman who felt inferior to a being as lowly as a Midgardian and envied it for a Jotun's love."

Amora laughed, the noise enough to cause the hair at the back of his neck to stand on end, but as he turned on his heel, beginning to walk away, she suddenly stopped, crying out, "Don't go! Loki? Loki, please! Stop!"

He didn't waver. Instead he continued to head for the steps that would lead him back to the light of the palace's halls, and as he neared them, her voice again turned threatening and she screamed after him angrily, the words falling from her lips sending a chill through his body.

As he climbed the stairs, her voice gradually began to fade away, disappearing into the darkness of the dungeons. Without thinking, he pulled the small vial from beneath his tunic, staring down at it as it glowed in his hand before he returned it to its hiding place. The All Father had further stripped Amora of her powers upon their return from Midgard and filled the vial that Loki carried with its essence. It permanently disabled her magic as long as it remained closed.

Why it had been entrusted to him he never quite understood, though he was certain that it was a test of sorts. He would have to leave it behind to another Asgardian for safekeeping when he and Thor left for Midgard. It would be far too dangerous to risk bringing it with the threat of Am-heh and whatever forces Kemet intended to send after the god.

Perhaps one of Thor's friends would work. For as much as he loathed them, he found them to at least be reliable when absolutely necessary. He walked out into the main hall, glancing around at the brightly lit room, and felt his mouth twist into a frown as he found Thor waiting for him, Fandral in tow.

Loki resisted the urge to make a scathing remark at the sight of the two and instead stopped, lifting his eyebrows at the elder Prince, "Yes?"

"Did I not tell you that she would be unreasonable?" Thor asked, smiling crookedly as he and Fandral came forward.

"It was nothing that I could not handle," Loki replied dismissively.

"I would not be so sure, after all she is a madwoman," Fandral said sparing a glance towards the steps that led to the dungeons. "Beautiful, but mad."

"I do believe that you said something similar of me some time ago, Fandral," Loki murmured, raising his eyebrows. "Is that not still the case?"

"It's quite different in your case," Fandral said quickly. "You were...lost. She is a very different sort of mad."

Loki smiled and Fandral relaxed slightly.

"Perhaps you could handle her fits of rage, but you may wish to admit that you were wrong, brother. Humility is most becoming of a Prince," Thor taunted, bringing Loki's attention back to him.

He rolled his eyes, "Yes, Thor, you were right. Is that all?"

"For now," Thor nodded. "Fandral and I were discussing the possibility of going for a hunt this afternoon. We were just off to see about the others, would you care to join us?"

"Unless you are retiring to the library once more," Fandral interjected, "for whatever it is that you spend your time doing there."

Loki glanced between the two of them, pressing his lips together. He'd never been overly fond of accompanying Thor and his friends on one of their hunting trips, but perhaps he would make an exception today.

"Yes, actually, I think that a bit of air would do me well," Loki answered carefully after a few moments. "I'll join you this afternoon."

Thor grinned, clapping him on the shoulder with enough force to make him stagger to the side. He nodded at his brother, straightening, and waited until Thor had started off to fall in step beside Fandral. They walked together in silence for some time, Loki listening as Thor carried on about the last time he had been hunting while Fandral oooh'd and ahh'd, jesting and discussing battle techniques with him when the time for adulation had passed.

It was only when they reached the training grounds and Thor ventured out into the frenzy of warring soldiers in the midst of practice to find Sif and Volstagg that Loki turned to look at Fandral.

"What do you know of Amora's imprisonment?" he asked carefully, scanning his eyes across the faces of the soldiers nearby curiously.

"The All Father has stripped her of her powers permanently in a fashion different to your own," he replied, also studying the warriors closest to them who were engaged in a fierce sword-fight.

"Indeed," Loki murmured, fishing the vial out from beneath his tunic once again. Fandral turned, staring at it, and then looked up at Loki in surprise.

"Is that...?"

"It is," he confirmed. "And as I am sure you are aware, Thor intends to return to Midgard with my assistance to deal with the Kemetian's gross stupidity, which means this vial will require a keeper in my absence."

"And you are asking me to guard the Enchantress's magic?" Fandral asked, disbelievingly.

"I am asking you to do your duty for the future king of Asgard," Loki said, nodding towards Thor who was making his return and speaking in earnest with Sif, Hogun, and Volstagg.

Fandral frowned at him, "Surely it is dangerous?"

"Incredibly," Loki replied gently, "but surely a brave warrior such as yourself is willing to rise to the challenge?"

Fandral smirked and Loki smiled at him, pleased to see that his plan had worked. One less thing to worry about so long as the bumbling fool didn't become infatuated with Amora over the course of the next several months. He lifted the string that the vial hung from over his head and handed it to Fandral, saying hurriedly, "You must not tell anyone that you possess this vial; do not open it under any circumstance and do not go to Amora with it. Is that understood?"

Fandral nodded, "Yes, of course, Prince Loki." Loki watched in silence as Fandral lifted the string over his head and dropped it, the vial bumping against his chest before he hid it away beneath his own tunic. "I will guard it with my life."

"Hopefully it need not come to that," Loki murmured and before Fandral could respond, Thor and the others were upon them and Loki again withdrew into himself, playing his part as they regarded him carefully. They were still uncertain of his allegiances despite Thor's reassurances and while he thought that Fandral might now see what Thor said to be true, he couldn't say the same for the others.

"What have you given to Fandral?" Thor asked quietly as they began to head towards the stables to choose their mounts.

"The vial," Loki replied, sparing a glance over his shoulder at the others who were speaking quietly amongst themselves. "It needs protecting while we are gone, you know. Unless our agreement is no more?"

Thor frowned at him, "Our agreement stands."

"In that case, I hope that you have begun to prepare yourself. I certainly don't wish for you to be sick again."

* * *

"He didn't tell you anything?" Lily sounded disbelieving and I turned, shrugging nonchalantly at her.

We'd been friends for as long as I could remember. Our mothers had met at a dinner for engineers before we were born and had become fast friends themselves. Soon after meeting my parents, Lily's mother divorced her first husband and married Charles, Lily's father. They had found themselves pregnant at relatively the same time and Lily and I were born within less than a year of one another. We'd grown up in the same Upper Eastside neighbourhood and while we'd attended different schools, we remained friends throughout our childhoods and major moves in life.

She'd had a large hand in constructing my reunion with Jim after I decided to settle in New York and, while friends with us both, always placed her loyalty with me first. She was my confidant. Ava, her younger sister, was Ben's friend and far more successful than any of us had been in school save maybe Jim, who had always put Lily and I to shame. Ava was planning to go pre-med at Georgetown from what Lily had told me. Lily, on the other hand, had gone to NYU to study anthropology and English, which was where she remained.

She was among the few people who knew the full details surrounding my father's death and my involvement with Loki and the Avengers. It was always a breath of fresh air when Lily took the train home to visit her family and dropped in with Ava; it meant I wasn't forced to lie about anything. I didn't have to remember the story I had come up with in an hours long session with Natasha before the funeral. Ava knew little details, too, because of Ben, but nowhere near as much as Lily, who had raised an eyebrow when I recounted my time in Washington with Loki and scoffed when I attempted to deny any funny business.

_"Oh please, Raleigh," she'd said, "spare me. I've known you since we ate dirt in your backyard, before that even, and I know you had cabin fever. Don't even try to deny it. Crazy or not, he isn't exactly ugly."_

_"Well, okay, maybe," I'd conceded to her as I poured her another glass of wine. I'd looked around quickly to make sure Ben wasn't hanging around and then lowered my voice to add, "Maybe more than once."_

_"Called it!" she'd crowed, lifting her glass into the air victoriously. She smirked at me as I waved and motioned for her to be quieter. "Well, come on, how was it? Good? Bad? Like, did you do it just to pass the time? Or was it...out of this world?" She waggled her eyebrows suggestively as she finished, her smile devilish._

_I'd groaned, falling back on the sofa's cushions while she cackled, pleased with herself._

"That's pretty unlike Jimbo," she said, bringing me back the our present conversation.

"Well, Jimbo isn't being very Jimbo," I muttered, pulling a cutting board out to begin cutting up vegetables for dinner. Since his return from Toronto, Jim had been off. I hadn't been able to put my finger on exactly what it was that was wrong with him, but I'd stumbled upon him on numerous occasions just frozen in the middle of a room, unsure of why he had entered it or what he was planning to do. He'd been complaining about his head still despite his impending return to work following the submission of his medical and psychological test results, which had all reflected a clean bill of health despite his sudden disorientation.

He'd been aggressive and nasty on several occasions, even to his mother which had resulted in his coming to stay with me in Manhattan. Catherine had since gotten over whatever he had said, but he had stayed with me instead of returning to his parents. I'd been explaining all of his behaviour changes, nightmares, and newfound quirks to Lily for the past hour in the kitchen while he watched the news.

Heading towards the microwave to reheat her coffee, Lily looked over at me, asking, "I mean, he's said _nothing?"_

"He's told me bits and pieces," I admitted. "A guy on his team nearly died, but he won't talk about that. Coulson said a bit more."

"Yeah?" Lily glanced back at me as she punched a few buttons on the microwave to set the timer for her coffee. "What did Phil say?"

"He had a lot of internal damage, they basically had to remove part of his intestine and bowel. He'll live, but no more field work. He was supposed to be covering Jim and something happened, I don't know what and they won't say."

"Spooky," she muttered. "What about the bad guy? Did he see him?"

I nodded. "He doesn't want to believe what he saw though. You know what Jim's like."

She snorted, "You mean Mr. Hard Facts or Get the Fuck Out? Yeah, I know."

I smiled at her, picking up a celery stalk which I began to chop.

"Well, he definitely picked the wrong branch of law enforcement if he wants hard facts," Lily continued as the microwave beeped.

"He's in shock, I think," I replied. "He's dealt with the rest of it pretty well, but this guy apparently wasn't even human, Lil."

"Then what was he?" she asked me, walking to the counter. She lifted her eyebrows at me, "Was he an alien, too?"

I made a face at her, then checked to make sure that there was no one hanging around the foyer or front room before I turned to her and explained, "He said that the guy started out normal, but then he changed. Like, his head and his face just morphed."

Lily's brow furrowed, "Faces don't just melt off."

"Apparently this guy's did."

"Weird," she murmured, "did he say what he changed to?"

"A jackal," Jim's voice was curt and I stiffened at the sound of it. Turning slowly, I found him standing in the doorway of the kitchen, his eyes locked upon Lily and I.

"You're up," I said after a few tense moments, "you feel all right?"

"Fine," he replied shortly as he walked into the kitchen, frowning at Lily and I. "Has my mother called again?"

I shot Lily a look, as if to say 'See? This is what I meant,' and then looked back at Jim, "She rang while you were asleep. I told her you were doing better and that you'd give her a buzz later. She said we're welcome to Sunday brunch at your grandparents if you feel up to it."

"Great," he nodded, pulling open the fridge. He looked between Lily and I and then continued, his tone turning snide, "Don't stop gossiping about me on my account now, I'm just passing through."

"It's not gossip, Jim," Lily said flatly as she folded her arms across her chest defensively. "Don't be an ass."

"Discussing someone behind their back without their knowledge?" Jim raised his eyebrows and then made a face, almost as if he were thinking about a very difficult question before his eyes widened and he snapped his fingers, pointing at Lily, "You're totally right, Lil! That's not gossip. What was I thinking?"

She rolled her eyes, sighing heavily, and picked up her coffee mug as she fell silent.

"We worry," I said quietly as he began to search through the fridge.

"Well, you shouldn't," he told me, "I'm fine. I've never felt better actually."

"You're a horrible liar, Jim," I said as I set down my knife and walked to the fridge. "If you felt great, you'd be back at work, not -"

"That's enough," he snapped, straightening at once. He scowled at me and then continued on in a quiet voice, "I'm fine. Don't test me, Raleigh."

"Or what?" I asked him, lifting my eyebrows. "What will you do?"

He didn't reply, instead he grabbed a bottle of beer and a bowl of pasta that had been leftover from the night before. He shut the fridge and then brushed past me as I protested, "I'm making dinner right now, can't you wait?"

"I'm hungry now," he replied coolly. "Maybe you should've cooked earlier."

"I'm so sorry I have a job," I called after him sarcastically, "I'll just quit and stay home all day for you like a good little woman!"

"Good," he said as he left the kitchen. "Do that."

"Jeez," Lily said after a few moments, "What crawled up his ass and died?"

"Wish I knew," I muttered, returning to the cutting board again. "He's just been such a bear to deal with the last couple weeks, like, I just don't get it. I know he's stressed out and he's upset, but I feel like it's not even him."

"He'll simmer down," Lily said gently, "he always does."

I sighed heavily, looking up at her, "He hasn't been sleeping much either."

"Huh," she laughed softly, "you two are a match made in heaven then since you can't make it through a full night anymore apparently." I frowned and she held up her hands apologetically, "Wasn't trying to offend you."

"I know," I muttered, "I'm just really worried. I walked in on him last night and he was talking in his sleep, I don't even know what he was saying."

"Didn't he take German in school?"

"It wasn't German. I know what German sounds like," I said dismissively, "and, besides, he's never dreamt in German before."

"Then what was it?" she asked, keeping her voice low. "What other languages does he actually know?"

I shrugged, "It sounded weird, that's all I know. Like, it wasn't a romantic language or anything. It was something weird."

"So...German," she said simply, "it's just English with a funny accent after all and hey, English is a pretty weird language."

I looked up at her sharply.

"Okay, fine, Russian?"

"Lily."

"Ancient Greek?"

"Maybe Arabic," I said with a sigh. "That's the only thing I can think."

She scoffed, "Where would he learn Arabic? And why would he even need it?"

I shook my head, "I have no clue, all I know is that I came in and he was having a fit in bed just talking and all and when I woke him up he didn't have a clue what I was talking about. He was just normal Jim again."

"You think he's not telling you something," Lily said more than asked. She leaned back against the counter, sighing deeply, and I flicked my gaze up to look at her. Her dark brown eyes met my own, expressive as ever, and she pressed her pale lips together. "I don't think he'd lie to you," she said after a few moments. "Jim doesn't lie to you. He never has."

"But just say," I began to argue when the sound of a loud thud echoed from the floor above. I stopped speaking, dropping the knife onto the cutting board where I left it. Turning on my heel, I made for the main hall, Lily close behind, and headed towards the living room. Curious, I poked my head around the doorframe to find the room empty, the television still tuned to the news as it had been for days.

Shit.

"Jim?" I called out, turning around to brush past Lily. I headed for the stairs, my heart pounding in my chest as I began to climb the steps. I glanced over my shoulder at the Lily as she followed, and said, "Get your phone out. You might need to -"

A loud scream cut off the rest of my words and I froze as I reached the landing, exchanging a horrified look with Lily before I bolted down the hall towards the sound of Jim's shouts. I could just make out the sound of Lily saying something about calling an ambulance in the background, but I didn't pay attention, merely pushed my way into the bathroom to find Jim on the floor, convulsing and shouting, clutching his head between his hands.

_"Jim!"_

* * *

Loki inhaled sharply as he and Thor landed together on the hard earth and tumbled to the ground, his cheek pressing into the damp grass of the field they had targeted. He pushed himself up slowly, eyeing Thor over his shoulder to find that the god of thunder was rubbing his head, his face pinched together in pain.

"You certainly didn't pick the wisest of locations to teleport us, brother," Thor said, grimacing at him.

"You'll have to excuse me for not being aware of the Midgardian weather," Loki returned curtly, wiping his muddied hands upon his trousers. It seemed to recently have poured rain over the farmer's field, leaving both he and Thor lying in thick, dark mud, their feet having slipped out from beneath themselves upon landing.

"Never you mind the weather," Thor said as he began to stagger to his feet, "we have far more important things at hand, such as making our way to Manhattan from this place. And you," Thor faltered for a moment, watching as Loki got to his feet, and then said gently, "I don't know if you are aware of this but you are not well liked in this area, brother."

"Surely you can just do us both the favour of punching anyone who might be clever enough to recognise me?" Loki suggested dryly. "Or clobber them over the head with that hammer of yours as you do?"

Thor frowned deeply. "How do you intend to travel to Manhattan from this place? We are nowhere close to it. Not for -"

"We'll drive," Loki cut him off with a dismissive wave of his hand.

"Brother, I do not believe that is the wisest of choices," Thor began, his tone admonishing. "Neither of us are learned in the road manoeuvres of the Midgardians or their laws."

"They allow children to drive the things, Thor. You are at least mildly more intelligent than a human child, aren't you?"

Thor exhaled sharply and Loki spared a glance at his adoptive brother curiously, pleased to find that the other god was wrestling with himself and whatever urge he had to strangle Loki. He turned back to the horizon and then spun around on his heel, beginning to search for the nearest road. The first thing was to find a home and to steal clothes. Walking about in their Asgardian tunics and trousers was not in their best interest at all; it would only serve to draw the attention of locals. At least Thor had seen the reason in leaving their armour behind for a change.

"I don't believe that we should steal from humans," Thor argued as Loki set off.

"You and I believe very different things," Loki said coolly. "And I would hardly class it as stealing, Thor. It's for a just cause. A wise human might forgive such a slight when faced with a motivation such as ours."

"The ends justify the means?" Thor asked sourly.

"Yes," he nodded. Thor was silent and so he continued on, though he couldn't be entirely certain that it was to Thor he was speaking or himself, "The ends do indeed justify the means. As they always do."

* * *

**A/N:** Woohoo... Updating in November. In the midst of the hell on earth that is nanowrimo. Whoop. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed the latest chapter. Still not sure when I'll get to posting the next one, but it'll be within relatively the same time span as this last update here, I imagine.

Anyway, thank you to everyone who read and reviewed or favoured and/or followed the story or me. That was supremely kind of you and I very much appreciate it.

* * *

**Reviews:**

**KMD88:** Haha, you're assuming we're going to become famous writers though :p Though it is my favourite fantasy life to imagine, haha. I told you it was going to happen! You texted me and were like "I like Jeron" and I was like "Don't get attached" and you went "Goddamn it." But LOOK! He isn't dead! Surely that makes up for something?! And thank you. :) That's so nice of you to say about the side characters. Tony is my favourite among the Avengers, he really is. I think he's possibly one of my absolute favourite characters to write to tell you the truth. And yes! Good! I'm glad he's scary. Phew. Weight off of my shoulders. We flatter each other, that's why we're such good friends really. :p Not the years of knowing each other, but the flattery. That's totally it.  
**CharmiaArkenstone:** Thank you! And I'd be very keen to help you out with your story a bit here and there when I can if you'd like, though I can't give you too much assistance as my schedule is quite restrictive.  
**Queenofclover:** (1) My favourite sound. (4) Well, Jim is actually quite pivotal to the entire plot of this story... And yes, I quite like Mariah. She's an interesting one to say the least. (5) Not in this story, I'm afraid. It's a bit ambitious right now.  
**January Raines:** Thanks! I'm glad you've liked them. And hey, they've returned! Well, they're halfway there anyway, haha. I think you're anticipating things quite well with what you said in your review. Oh thank you :) I don't often hear people say that so it's really lovely to hear that people do like them together. And I couldn't possibly say what the fate of their relationship is just yet. That comes later.  
**Starlet Spotlight:** I always sort of mention it to people that when I first wrote Raleigh (well for the first 25 or so chapters of Fire and Rain), I really loathed her. She was so incredibly naive and weak, but she's come so far as a character and now she has all of these new hurdles to face that I'm really very excited to tackle with her. Such as Chet. Who will most definitely be back. And thanks! I adore the relationship that Raleigh and Tony have forged over the course of the story and I love writing him. There was always a little part of me that liked the idea of them together and my Beta still has feels for them to this day when she reads scenes involving them together. But I'm a diehard Pepper/Tony shipper too, so I don't think I could ever have done that!  
**Reading Conundrum:** (4) I feel terrible and elated every time someone tells me that they were grossed out by that scene. So thank you but I'm sorry for grossing you out on your way to school! I'm a very big Jim fan. He's more or less the antithesis of Loki in terms of personality and I've always been very fond of he and Raleigh together. And as I said somewhere above, I unfortunately can't say much more about their relationship than that as there is plenty to be answered over the course of the next several chapters. (5) Good...that's exactly what I was going for with Chet. He really does make your skin crawl, even I'm disgusted with him half the time and I created him for goodness sake! Haha, I'm glad you liked Adam! His fangirling makes him even better. So glad to hear Am-heh was scary and thanks for your compliment on Tony! And Jeron got fixed up. Kind of. He's damaged goods, but fixed up.  
**Guest:** Unfortunately, I'm doing Nano and work full time during the week so I can't make too many promises about updating this as regularly as I do otherwise. :( But I'll endeavour to post when I can. And their reunion is getting closer by the day, I swear.


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